Q: How do you set real life aside and connect with
the imaginary worlds you create? And how long do you write each day/week?
-from Susan
A: Depends.
If the writing is
under contract with a deadline, it’s easy to stay focused. I have a due date
and so I aim to write a set number of words a day and that motivator works for
me. If it is 1,000 words, I might only get to 750 on Monday, but may be in the
zone and do 2,500 Tuesday. I was once a newspaper reporter and then editor, and
deadlines were what propelled a lot of the activity at the paper!
If I don’t have a
contract for the work I’m doing, something not in an existing series, for
example, it’s much harder. I have one eye on the contracted work, the marketing
and promotion I need to do, and a launch date coming up. The new WIP is a
struggle because I don’t know the characters as well, and may even be writing
outside of my favored genre. The one right now also requires research and
there’s no siren song more distracting than amassing vast quantities of
information I’ll never use but which is important to understanding the time and
place in which my story’s set.
It’s February.
Whatever discipline I had disappeared around the holidays and I’m writing or
researching three hours a day, but actual prose for the new book is probably
only half of that. I am still not settled into this new story and I’m still
figuring out who these characters are, going back to poke them a bit as
something reveals itself. Once I hit my stride, I’ll be back at 1,000 words a
day, I promise myself. I am just now setting a realistic goal to finish the
first draft by a specific date. Then, I’ll count the number of days before that
date, divide the estimated length of the draft by them, and that will tell me
how many words per day I need to hit. As long as I can fool myself about the
set-in-stone quality of the due date, I will get back in gear.
Fingers crossed!
2 comments:
You said, "...there’s no siren song more distracting than amassing vast quantities of information I’ll never use but which is important to understanding the time and place in which my story’s set."
Writing is fun, but sometimes the research is more fun, Susan. At least for me. I can get lost in that for hours on hours and fool myself into thinking I'm working :-) .
But...you mean we're fooling ourselves, Paul?
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