Author’s Note: This article was originally published on June 30th, 2022 as part of a blog series about a novel I was ghostwriting for a client. If you haven’t read the introduction yet, you can find it here. After that, you can read how the first six days of this project went here.
Day 7
Today I hit two thousand words in about an hour and a half — a good pace for me, since I generally try to hit a thousand words per hour. Getting these words down early in the day eases the pressure on my mind, because I know that even if an emergency arises and I don’t write anything more, I’ll still have accomplished something.
Finding the Muse
Sometimes writing feels like tipping over and letting all the words gush out. Other times it feels like prying nails loose with a fork.
Recently I went through a long dry spell during which all sense of magic was absent. I did not hear any voice narrating in my mind throughout the day, and when I sat down to write, I could hardly envision even those scenes that should have been the most exciting.
Perhaps it will not come as a surprise to hear that I wasn’t reading or watching anything that excited me much, either. The two go together for me. If I’m not getting excited by other stories, I probably won’t stay excited about my own story for very long.
The dry spell lasted about a month, during which time I somehow continued to write two to three thousand words per day. It was grueling work, about as invigorating as a root canal.
The solution arrived from an unexpected quarter. I started watching the new season of Stranger Things, a show I had forgotten about for the last couple of years, and it sucked me in. The engine of my imagination sputtered, coughed, and then started chugging again, and it’s been going steady ever since.
My two cents: If you find yourself uninspired in your writing, consider returning to a favorite book, show, or movie, anything to remind you why you fell in love with storytelling in the first place.
It just might be the key to rediscovering your creativity.
Daily Word Count: 2160
Total Word Count: 11324
Day 8
The voice of inspiration is quieter today, probably from poor sleep. There are few things that sabotage morning writing as effectively as late nights.
Skipping Around
Sometimes I can “feel” the bones of a scene, but not always the ligaments that connect them. Rather than forcing myself to proceed word by word, I jump around in order to get the majority of the scene written as quickly as possible. If there are places where I can’t think of a particular word, I’ll use “_____” as a substitute. It’s easy enough to come through later and fill in those gaps.
If you tend to be a perfectionist and have a hard time leaving a scene unfinished, keep in mind that the fine details you’re stressing over may very well change based on what happens later in the book. Even the best of outlines don’t determine all the details that will crop up throughout the course of writing a book, and if you’ll have to come back to make some changes anyway, why fuss over things that might not matter later on in the process?
Daily Word Count: 2038
Total Word Count: 13362
Day 9
Today I received an editorial report on the prequel to the book I’m currently writing. It contained five pages of notes (a huge improvement from the twenty-one pages of the report for the previous book), along with several paragraphs of glowing praise.
It’s humbling, receiving such warm feedback when I’ve come to expect the opposite, especially since I know I felt uninspired during almost all of the process. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, however, I tend to have the same mental response:
I can do better.
It is good to celebrate small victories, as my wife likes to remind me. But it is also good to continually expect more of myself, to keep raising the bar and seeing if I can meet it.
Regardless of my mental approach, I should be able to make all the editorial changes within a day or two, far better than the week or so it took me to revise the last one. I will pause my rough draft writing until then.
Daily Word Count: 0
Total Word Count: 13362
Day 10
Finished the edits today. Didn’t get any more first draft writing done, but that’s okay. Tomorrow I will take another crack at it, and on Monday (three days from now) I will have to hit the ground running and see what progress I can make for the week.
Daily Word Count: 0
Total Word Count: 13362
Day 11
Excellent progress on the rough draft this morning. It’s good to be back in the flow of writing this new book, since the story can quickly grow stale if I leave off writing for too long.
Daily Word Count vs. Project Word Count
Even though I aim to write two to three thousand words per day, I usually force myself to write more than this. I don’t do this because I’m a masochist but because of how many words I remove during the process.
Sometimes, for example, I might jot down some outline ideas on a chapter page. Technically these count toward the project total, but they’re not really part of the book. As I wrap up the chapter, I delete the superfluous material, then continue writing to make up the difference.
This way, I can be confident of when I will hit my 60,000-word goal.
Daily Word Count: 2018
Total Word Count: 15380
Day 12
Learned the terms deuteragonist and tritagonist today. If the protagonist is the most important character in a story, the deuteragonist could be considered the second most important, and the tritagonist of third greatest importance. (You could argue the antagonist deserves more recognition, but that’s a different discussion altogether.)
Learn something new every day, don’t we?
Daily Word Count: 2525
Total Word Count: 17905
* * *
So that’s Week 2! As you can see, this is very much a work-in-progress —not just the book itself, but the process. Check back in for Week 3, where I explore the value of sleep, daydreaming, and being a bad writer.
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