1000 words a day

I hit 35,000 words on my current novel this morning. That’s about 120-140 pages, depending on how the paging is done. In other words, close to half. In Scrivener, each chapter has it’s own little file, so you don’t see the whole number unless you ask for it. I thought I was down in the 10,000 range! Imagine my surprise! I’m through the Beginning and square in the Middles, and things are finally clicking.

Which is odd, because usually for me, it’s the other way around. The first hundred pages fly by, all bunnies and rainbows, the plot is brilliant, I adore the characters who are all witty and tragic in just the right amounts, and the prose is deliciously flowing out of my hands as if I’m taking dictation. It’s simply marvelous. As you can imagine, I have, traditionally, adored the First Hundred—

—and then I come to a grinding halt as the Middles start up and the whole thing turns to The Worse Crap Ever right before my eyes. Crossing into the Middles is usually like waking from an enchantment. Poof, the fairies have all vanished and the feast has been revealed to be only leaves and ashes in my mouth.

Not so with this one. With this one, the First Hundred have been a grueling process of seeing only as far as the next 1000 words, never knowing what I’m doing, or where I’m going, but being pretty sure that it is all stupid, awful, terrible, and just plain no good. I’ve been writing through a huge case of the doubts and Writer’s Crazies from page one. If the First Hundred is more typically a fairy feast, this First Hundred has been like taking medicine, eyes closed, nose pinched, trying not to taste it as it goes down.

I haven’t even been able to draft in the normal way, one foot in front of the other, but have been roughing in scenes, layering them in over many days. FIrst maybe just a few sentences of plot. Then maybe adding some dialog, and maybe a paragraph or two will come out in actual prose. Then I go back in a few days later and lay in some inner dialog, or some scenery. A few days later, I go back in again. Which is part of why it felt like I was still in the 10,000s. I keep working on the same chapters.

Or so I thought. But, apparently, I have been pushing forward. 1000 words a day is my loose goal, and it does add up, even if I don’t hit it every day, what with the back and forth momentum this draft has going. Still, at this rate, 1000 words a day, I’ll have a beginning-to-end draft by the end of the year. I mean, a Crap First Draft, but that’s fine. You don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve got the whole thing. And I might have the whole thing before 2010.

Amazing! The process is working! And I’m even kind of liking this novel now. A little. It’s actually starting to shape up into something interesting. Part of it. I think.

I guess it’s true when they say you only know how to write the book you’re writing right now. The lessons of previous books may or may not apply. The only thing that seems to hold is this: show up. Keep putting 1000 words down every day. You can’t get there if you don’t keep walking.