Toreas Blog

I’m very satisfied and utterly disappointed in that day.

On one hand, I only managed to get a total of 2 hours and 30 minutes of uninterrupted writing time together. I stopped the timer for bathroom breaks, making food, taking phone calls and checking mails. All none writing activities, the timer was stopped. Sitting there thinking about the next sentence was included in the time though. Still, with all the prep work, I’m unhappy about how little actual time I got to spend on actual writing. Two tasks were planed to disrupt my day, but more were coming in and really making it hard for me.

On the other hand, I managed to get 3532 words together in that time. This also boils down to a word per hour count of 1412 or a rough 11k words per day (8 hours). Of course this is all not realistic. This number does not mean I can write 300’000 words per month, even if I did work on this full time. What it means is that if a push is needed or wanted for whatever reason, then this is what could be expected.

When I was writing, it felt great. It went on and even though I did not have the clearest of lines laid out, the story flowed on just by itself. After it was done, I merged it into the rest and the accomplishment felt even better. It’s a good moral boost, but now it has to be seen if it also helped produce something usable.

On chapter 4, I have rewritten about two thirds from the last revision. Nothing world altering, but small subtle things that had to be spelled out differently. I will closely look at the parts I wrote yersteday to see if that material has been any good.

In the least, it gave me opportunities to lay out the story better and show me the points that need more thought. But it also gave me practice in writing which in turn hopefully will mean a better overall story. So in general this has been good.

If I do this again, I will have to find a different location though. I found that for this sort of writing, it would be best to be somewhere else. A room with a desk, a chair and white walls would be ideal, but I would settle for almost anywhere “not here”. And the cellphone will be off next time too.

Though for editing, I prefer my home office again. It’s odd how different jobs with the same material work better in one surrounding than in another.

Before I can just dive into the writing itself, I need to prepare a little. The most important bit is to lay out a very small but essential line to follow. To have this guideline I wrote down, but by hand. I have a general storyline in my head, but now I needed some more points to lay down what’s happening.

The notepad I used is about the size of my hand, just slightly wider. I constraint myself to one line for each “thought” I wanted to note down. I ended up with 14 lines, each of them being worth a chapter or being a connection between two chapters. If I end up with not enough outline, I can always stop and make some more.

I also put my phone away, made sure I got ample supplies of snacks and drink and now it’s time to dig in. I will post running updates on the Toreas Twitter. Once I call it a day, I tally up here how it all went.

Thinking about the sizes of books in the fantasy genre and general speed of writings, I was thinking about the rather annoying bits that happen when you start writing a novel. The arch is clear in general, go from point A to point B, but the specifics are not. At the same time, although your specifics are hazy, you know precisely what happens at point B. But you also have the idea in your head that you can’t just go on, because you didn’t finish the part in front.

If it would be writing a test, you would skip that question and come back to it later. So I will do a push writing event just for myself. The goal is to figure out, how much writing can be done in how much time. I will dedicate as much of Saturday to this as I can.

The premise is simple. I will start to write early, without distractions, and just keep on writing for the whole day, only stopping for the basic needs. I will run a timer on the side, that I stop when I am not writing. For the writing itself, it’s all about getting forward. Some places the inspiration will strike instantly and a whole chapter or multiple chapters just flow out. Then again it will be though, so the text will be short and general description, maybe just a few words mentioning what should be at that point in the story, just to get forward.

It’s not about perfect text, quite the opposite. Worst case all of it gets rewritten at one point. The main objective is to push forward. So what if a text is bad or even horrible. In the least it’s the example on how that part should not be written.

So with this event I want to know how much I will have written in what time. So I get a words per hour minute/hour/day metric out of it in the end. Not quality rating, but a quantity indicator.

Also it might be fun to do, getting into the flow of writing and just see how far it goes. Of course once done, it also will give that glowing sensation of having progressed significantly.

After that, editing to hell and back ensues. Moving, rewriting, expanding, shrinking and outright deleting.

I intend to enjoy it.