Hey Folks,
In keeping with my usual bent toward recommending excellent resources, I’ve found a new interior layout and cover design print source.
Both the price and quality are excellent. That’s a hard combo to beat.
A couple days ago, someone on DWS’s site recommended Cover to Upload as a good place to have covers designed. Dean agreed.
This morning I checked out the site personally and have already emailed them with a few questions about my own work. As I learn more, I’ll keep you posted.
I had settled with the thought that I would publish my work only as ebooks from now on. This discovery turns that decision on its head.
I encourage you to check out Cover to Upload. The URL is http://covertoupload.com. Or you can always find it on my site in the left sidebar under Writers’ Resources.
* * *
Probably another nonwriting day today. Weshul see.
Actually, I had some free time to write this afternoon, but I decided to devote the time to reading instead. Well, and to writing this, as it turns out.
I have a sneaking suspicion that partly this extended delay is my way to sabotage or disrupt my own challenge, thereby making it more difficult.
Seems like in my life I’ve always performed better when I had an adversary. And enjoyed it more.
Or maybe I’m trying to set it aside completely and set myself up for another challenge. I honestly don’t know. After all, in the second novel, I’ve written only a long opening. And I can keep Heinlein’s Rule 2 (You must finish what you write) later. (grin)
Anyway, it’ll be what it’s gonna be. No worries.
Topic: A Rumination on Writing, Myself, and Other Writers
I recently bought The Bachman Books by Stephen King (part of what I’m reading both for pleasure and to Learn).
It arrived today, and I was a little disappointed.
When I bought The Bachman Books I was expecting all of them. I’m intrigued by Early Stephen King. But I’ll find all of them eventually.
Along with two other novels, The Bachman Books include The Running Man. Something he wrote in his introduction to The Bachman Books spurred this topic.
According to King’s overall introduction, he wrote The Running Man in 72 hours “and it was published with very few changes.”
And “[a]ccording to King’s 2002 memoir On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he wrote The Running Man within a single week” (Wikipedia).
Either way, helluva job.
So I did the math.
With The Running Man coming home at just over 69,700 words, he would have to write 968 words per hour straight through for 72 hours. That’s 23,234 words per day. Or roughly 2000 words per hour for 12 hours for three days.
To write it in a 7-day week, he would still have to write just under 10,000 (9957) words per day. That sounds more realistic to me.
But it doesn’t matter. The point is, when he was in the chair, he was W-R-I-T-I-N-G.
My silly little challenge of writing two novels in a month kind’a pales in comparison, doesn’t it? (grin) And people call me prolific. Tsk tsk.
Of course, Bachman (King) was young. He was a freshman in college and, according to him, The Running Man was “a book written by a young man who was angry, energetic, and infatuated with the art and the craft of writing.”
Well, two out of three aren’t bad. I’m not young, but I’m infatuated with the art and craft of writing.
And I’m angry, in a way. Mostly at myself.
I want desperately to increase my productivity. By which I mean my time in the chair. And my production while in the chair (actually writing).
And of course, that’s entirely up to me, even with life rolls, etc. Factors external to ourselves influence us only as much as we allow them to. Priorities, folks. Priorities.
I’m also a little frustrated at, if not angry with, writers who Don’t want that for themselves. How can any writer not want to be more prolific?
For the record, I’m not including those for whom the primary purpose of writing is to put on public display how much they “suffer for their art” or some such nonsense.
I don’t do suffering. There’s enough of that around without looking for it. If writing were some kind of laborious agony, I’d drop it and find something fun to do.
I literally would give anything to have hit upon Heinlein’s Rules and Writing Into the Dark when I was 20, or 30, or 40, or 50. Yes, anything.
But of course, as we are reminded every day, It Is What It Is. So only one question remains:
Do I want it badly enough to actually do it?
Gawd I hope so.
Stay tuned.
Today, and (Not) Writing
Rolled out at 3:30 again, and did next to nothing all day but relax, chat with my son and grandson, etc. Nothing bad. It was fun. And fun is the key.
Back (writing) tomorrow.
Of Interest
If you want to learn to format your own book interiors for CreateSpace, check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FzvtxK686c. (I haven’t checked this out yet, and after what I passed along at the beginning of this Journal entry, I probably won’t.)
At Dean’s, he announces the Strength Regular Sales Workshop at http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/strength-regular-sales-workshop-now-available/.
Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 850 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 850
Writing of Novel Two
Day 1…… 978 words. Total words to date…… 978
Day 2…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX
Total fiction words for the month……… 33439
Total fiction words for the year………… 185305
Total nonfiction words for the month… 12060
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 48650
Total words for the year (fiction and nonfiction)…… 233955