I've been loafing a lot lately. But I tend to write in spurts. I greatly admire those people who can sit down and write a particular number of words a day, but I'm not one of them. I usually write when I'm a.inspired or b.desperate. This morning I was determined to finish the unicorn fantasy because my editor wants it, and I have two other books to finish (I think that would fall under b.desperate) so I sat down and started writing.
Remember I said I'd probably finish it up in 2500 words? Ha. I wrote a love scene, the big race scene, and half of the climactic ending before I fell over with exhaustion and stopped typing. (It's hard to type when you're lying in a limp huddled heap on the floor.) At that point I checked and realized I'd written almost four thousand words. This stupid book (originally supposed to be a "free short story") is up to 17,500 words and it's not done yet! I think I'll suggest to my co-author that we call it LONG AND LONGERER...
*Sigh* But I'll finish it tomorrow. Honest. I will.
Inspired and desperate here, too. (note to self -- do *not* attempt to use "Inspired and Desperate" as a brand) I generally write in bits and pieces of scenes, then have a long session to patch everything together...where I usually find out I'm either over or under where I need to be.
ReplyDeleteSasha, the sad thing is that this IS "short" for me. The shortest story I've managed to write was 13,500 words. I just can't write really, really short (and apparently, neither can my co-author). It actually took me a long time to learn to write stories that were less than 100,000 words!
ReplyDeleteAnd Anna, I used to write like you do, but nowadays I usually write the book more or less in order, although I do occasionally go back and insert scenes here and there. But you gotta write the way you gotta write. I didn't try to change my method of writing on purpose; it just happened over the years:-).