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A marked crow
Dec. 27th, 2004 | 02:48 am
Only 364 shopping days until Christmas, thank God.
-Wrote 1,800 words of "The Black Paladin" today. Coupled with the 1,400 I did yesterday, it more than makes up for my failure to do any writing on Christmas Eve. (Assuming a daily 1,000 word minimum, of course). This also finishes up Chapter 1 at about 8,500 words. Therefore I can guess that the rough draft will fall between 80,000 and 90,000 words, rather short, for a novel. (The standard minimum for a novel is about 60,000 words). Granted, just because Chapter 1 was 8,500 words long doesn't mean that the remaining nine (projected) chapters will fall in the 8,000-10,000 word range. In "Worlds to Conquer", one of my previous books, the shortest chapter was about 3,000 words, while the longest was about 19,000. So we'll see. Though it's entirely possible that "The Black Paladin" will wind up in the 125,000-150,000 word range. I sincerely hope not. I've written two novels that went over the 300,000 word mark, and it gets *very* tough after a quarter million.
I suppose this fixation with word count could come across as obsessively neurotic (or neutroically obsessive?), but I don't think so. So much about writing (fiction, at least) is subjective. Artistic value, entertainment, aesthetic appeal, blah, blah, and more blah. (Much of this is windy BS; just ask any English major about the effect of T.S. Eliot or the mysteriously lowercase e.e. cummings on modern literature and you'll get more windy BS than you can handle). But there's nothing subjective about word count, even though most of those words stink and will have to be cut (I always cringe to realize that I will cut about 10% of everything I ever write. Oh, the inefficiency). Word count's *there*, a quantitative measurement of effort expended. Possibly wasted effort, but effort nonetheless.
It's also fun to be writing sword-and-sorcery again. My last four books (The Contract, Worlds to Conquer, Locksmiths, and All Saints' Day) were "urban" or "contemporary" fantasy, in that all or some of the action takes place on contemporary Earth. So I haven't done any honest sword-and-story fantasy since 2001. Sword-and-sorcery might be wholly dependent on the Tolkien and Howard paradigms, but it's still fun. (And I hope that "The Black Paladin" isn't *wholly* derivative).
And here's the, um, interesting item of the day:
Some background. Elaine Corvidae is the author of, among other novels, "The Crow Queen". Apparently she identifies with her work to a remarkable degree, because she had a large, stylized crow tattooed on her back. (The picture is on her website, and curious persons can see it here: http://www.onecrow.net/MyTat.htm).
-JM
-Wrote 1,800 words of "The Black Paladin" today. Coupled with the 1,400 I did yesterday, it more than makes up for my failure to do any writing on Christmas Eve. (Assuming a daily 1,000 word minimum, of course). This also finishes up Chapter 1 at about 8,500 words. Therefore I can guess that the rough draft will fall between 80,000 and 90,000 words, rather short, for a novel. (The standard minimum for a novel is about 60,000 words). Granted, just because Chapter 1 was 8,500 words long doesn't mean that the remaining nine (projected) chapters will fall in the 8,000-10,000 word range. In "Worlds to Conquer", one of my previous books, the shortest chapter was about 3,000 words, while the longest was about 19,000. So we'll see. Though it's entirely possible that "The Black Paladin" will wind up in the 125,000-150,000 word range. I sincerely hope not. I've written two novels that went over the 300,000 word mark, and it gets *very* tough after a quarter million.
I suppose this fixation with word count could come across as obsessively neurotic (or neutroically obsessive?), but I don't think so. So much about writing (fiction, at least) is subjective. Artistic value, entertainment, aesthetic appeal, blah, blah, and more blah. (Much of this is windy BS; just ask any English major about the effect of T.S. Eliot or the mysteriously lowercase e.e. cummings on modern literature and you'll get more windy BS than you can handle). But there's nothing subjective about word count, even though most of those words stink and will have to be cut (I always cringe to realize that I will cut about 10% of everything I ever write. Oh, the inefficiency). Word count's *there*, a quantitative measurement of effort expended. Possibly wasted effort, but effort nonetheless.
It's also fun to be writing sword-and-sorcery again. My last four books (The Contract, Worlds to Conquer, Locksmiths, and All Saints' Day) were "urban" or "contemporary" fantasy, in that all or some of the action takes place on contemporary Earth. So I haven't done any honest sword-and-story fantasy since 2001. Sword-and-sorcery might be wholly dependent on the Tolkien and Howard paradigms, but it's still fun. (And I hope that "The Black Paladin" isn't *wholly* derivative).
And here's the, um, interesting item of the day:
Some background. Elaine Corvidae is the author of, among other novels, "The Crow Queen". Apparently she identifies with her work to a remarkable degree, because she had a large, stylized crow tattooed on her back. (The picture is on her website, and curious persons can see it here: http://www.onecrow.net/MyTat.htm).
-JM