Writing Report February 8, 2020

First post-Jeffery Cat (200?-2020) writing report.

The anticipated extra writing time I sought didn’t manifest itself in January (it proving to be a hectic month, with a lot of family related stuff getting in the way of my writing schedule), but I finally began writing late at night on a more reliable schedule in February.

I did begin keeping daily tab of my writing (i.e., what is actually entered into the computer for eventual publication or posting; I don’t count material written by hand until it’s transcribed). 

January saw a grand total of 26,423 words for the month, with 9 days being unproductive.

That’s an average of 852 words a day.

However, there were ten days in January where I wrote far more than 1,000 words (high water mark: 3,516) and most of the rest of the days were transcribing fictoids from the gift my grandson gave me to the computer.

(BTW, I’m loading ‘em up as fast as I write the, scheduling them to post every Tuesday.  I’ve got enough now to get me through the beginning of September, so if I’m run over by a truck tomorrow you’ll still be getting new posts from me for months to come.)

Fictoids, as I’ve noted, run about 250-400 words, so my monthly average is fairly representative of the writing I do.

The first week in February sees a total of 7,486 words written, and three non-productive days.

That’s a significant boost over January and due primarily to be finally being able to utilize the 10pm-2am hours for uninterrupted writing.

I think I can improve that pace.

Yesterday I transcribed a couple of handwritten pages of notes for a crime novel to the computer, came up with a short premise for yet another crime novel, wrote a short-short story (what’s the difference between a short-short story and a fictoid?  Fictoids go straight here; short-short stories get submitted), and started on my third Q’a female barbarian adventure.

(It’s the third written but will end up taking place before Q’a The Librarian which, if you haven’t read it yet, you should do Right Now, so hie thee hence over to DMR Books!)

The new Q’a story is loose and sloppy; it will require significant tightening up.

So be it.

My longer stories tend to be like that; only in my short fiction do I seem able to distill the express of an idea down to its purest form straight out of the gate.

That’s a wee bit of an exaggeration -- I still have mispelings and punctuation erro’s to deal with and occasionally trim or alter a line -- but for the most part the long material clocks in around 20%-25% longer than it will be in final form.

© Buzz Dixon