A Project Update
520 words.
That’s how much I wrote during a short, 35 minute writing session this morning. But I’m keeping Steven Pressfield’s words of wisdom from The War of Art in mind - I don’t care (yet) if what I wrote is any good because all that matters is that I overcame Resistance today. Perhaps Resistance is to blame for my failure to create a daily writing goal for myself. Sure, I’m always writing something, whether I’m journaling, typewriting, blogging or working on my weekly newsletter but lately when it come’s down to working on my fictional project, I don’t have much to show for it.
I’ve been working on a fictional project since the summer of 2020. For the first year or so, I just wrote whenever I could, sometimes getting into longer stretches of sticking to writing every morning. At some point along the way, I stopped writing. I wasn’t sure where to go with the narrative. I didn’t know anything about plot. I thought I needed to work on an outline instead, to get an idea of the story I wanted to tell and then continue writing. But if I don’t yet know the full story, how can I create an outline? At the end of last year I set aside this planning and outlining stage and was inspired to get back into writing. But I didn’t continue writing. Fast forward to this week. Over the past two months, I’ve worked here and there on my fictional story. This week I realized I should have a daily word count goal.
What is my goal with this fiction project?
My goal is to write a novel, plain and simple. I have a few a ideas that I’m passionate enough to keep writing about but I don’t really have a story or plot.
Where am I at with this fictional story?
Most of my writing on this story focuses on an Army Lieutenant, set in the 1940s. When I originally began writing this story back in 2020, I wrote two timelines simultaneously - the 1940s timeline and a present day timeline, both of which were meant to play upon each other and somehow converge. This was difficult so I set aside the present day timeline and focused on the ‘40s storyline.
Lately, I’ve become bored with the ‘40s timeline - my breadth of research has only really begun and sometimes the ‘40s seems too far a gap to span with my limited knowledge of the the period and I’m not confident that I can write about this and make it feel real. So I’ve started to think about the present day timeline again. That’s where I picked up today, just sitting down to write with no ideas in mind other than to continue working on the present-day storyline.
I’m learning the story as I write. I feel I need to finish it. I’m not concerned with editing or getting dialogue or descriptions exactly right during this stage. I’m exploring the plot. When I get to the end of the story, then I’ll go back and flesh out dialogue, plot and add in some research. I remind myself that I need to finish a (bad) first draft before I can start editing and molding it into something recognizable.
Why do I continue to work on this project?
It means a lot to me. I have a desire to share these ideas with people. I feel I have a novel in me and I want to prove to myself that I can do this. I want to have a first draft in the next 6 months and complete this book by the end of the year.
Do I set my daily word count goal based on the typical word count for a novel?
If we say a typical thriller is about 150,000 words, I need to write 840 words per day to reach my goal of completing this story in 6 months. I think that’s a realistic goal. (And then another six months for revisions!)
There’s still much I have to learn and research. For now, focus on your daily word count and get the (bad) first draft done.
