I am now in the hideous :waiting for editors to read the thing “stage. This is a truly revolting time for any writer.

Mitch, that is excellent advice. I second Kit’s recommendation.

-l.

Now I’ve gotten into the habit of doing it.

My secret: 250 words a day. That’s my quota. After 17 years online and 22 years as a professoinal journalist, I have developed extraordinary diarrhea of the keyboard, and 250 words a day is easy. And that’s all I need to do.

Of course, I always do more, because who can get up and stop after precisely 250 words (well, Rex Stout used to do it, but most people can’t)? You have to finish the sentence or even the paragraph, right?

Often, I find that 250 words is enough to get momentum going, and I can tap out a couple of thousand words easily. Other times — like this week — the days are filled with alarums and excursions and being chased by bears, and I’m pretty worn out in the evening when it’s time to do fiction, and 250 words is all I can manage (plus a few more to finish out the sentence or the paragraph). But that’s okay, because all I need to do is 250 words.

A novel is technically 60,000 words. At 250 words a day, that means you’ve knocked out the first draft of a novel in 240 days–eight months. Figure another eight months for polishing, and that’s a novel in a year and a third. Not bad.

The thing is, The Human Mind loves habit. Mine is currently in the habit of working on THE SPIRIT STONE. It does not like to admit that it needs to form new habits, ie, working on THE SHADOW ISLE instead or even — gasp! — taking a break.

Still, habit can be our friend. Once you force yourself into the habit of writing everyday, you will want to write every day.

And yes, I too go through the euphoria/depression cycle with my writing. Some days it’s the best thing since Proust, on others the worst since “Eye of Argon”. I think this is a characteristic of being in the grip of the Unconscious Mind, which is even weirder than the Conscious one.

Mark? C’mon. My spouse says he wouldn’t mind atall! (If only I could inspire the kids to find housecleaning a turn-on!)

Unfortunately, the Shoulder Sycophant usually makes an immediate handoff to the Shoulder Critic, and then they pass things back and forth just to keep me disoriented.

I think The Unstrung Harp should be required reading in creative writing classes. The Most Truthful depiction of the writing process ever.

I just spent the weekend reading through a zeroth draft for the first time. This is the phase when I discover that no, the book doesn’t suck — just the climax. And, okay, yeah, I need to trim bits from the first third before the momentum gets going. There’s work to be done. But it is not the gaping maw of sucktasticness it felt like when I finished it a week before.

OTOH, I could be deluding myself that it’s funny to anyone but me. That’s what I need outside eyes for. And for the stupidities I can’t see.

—L.

A useful thing I learned a long time ago, which I pass on to students. Every writer has what I call a Shoulder Critic–a nasty homonculous that sits on your shoudler while you work, whispering constant streams of undermining venom in your ear. “That’s crap, you know it is, why are you bothering? This will never be worth a damn! Oh, what a cliche that was! How can you call yourself a writer?”

I believe that the substance abuse problems of many great writers come from trying to shut this little turd up. Of course, it seems, the better the writer, the worse the Shoulder Critic. (I grant you, many don’t seem to have this particular problem, or if they do they have wills of titanium that allow them to ignore the little imp.)

My method, rather than booze or drugs, is to get out of bed at four or five and start working–before the little guy wakes up! –and thereby get a few hundred to a couple thousand words down before his carping starts.

Eventually, he wakes up, but by then there’s half a new chapter and he actually becomes useful in the rewrite. It’s as if he says “What’s this? You already did it? Well, okay…let’s look at it…oh, you need to fix this…”

So far, this has been coinsistent. I can do rewrites any time of day, but first draft has to be in the twilight zone of Not Yet Awake.

Oh, and Sherwood, I am really flattered. I have found that cleaning a woman’s house is one of the greatest aphrodisiacs not talked about in any of the books. But marriage? I don’t think it would work out… (he says in his best Captain Jack Sparrow drawl). But I appreciate your appreciation. (smile)