Tag: writing goals

100,000 words. So far.

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 5 Comments

hard at work 1

A slower start this year, but I’ve still hit over a hundred thousand words so far. That’s averaging a bit over 1400 a day. I’d like to be at 1500, but hey. I think that’s a little bit of “failing to success” (Dean Wesley Smith has a good article about that, here, from 2014, but the idea of achieving well, but slightly below your goals is still relevant). My overall posted goal for the year is a half million words, so I’m well on target for that.

I’ve published one novel (The Eye, the third volume in The Hidden Dome trilogy. I’ve also completed the draft of a contemporary thriller, written and submitted a couple of science fiction stories, and I’m halfway through the draft of a Canal Days, the sequel to last year’s Arlchip Burnout. Hope to have that out later in the year.

I’m in the process of prepping the next two sci-fi novels – Gretel and Cisterns, both standalones (at the moment). Should have those out by the end of March and the end of April respectively.

I do need to get on top of print versions. Haven’t got to that for The Eye yet, so there’s a dropped-the-ball moment. Should get that out with print versions of those other two. I should also bundle the three books of The Hidden Dome series so people can get the series as a set.

I’ve had a story in Aurealis and have signed contracts for another couple of stories coming out later this year (one a reprint). More on those closer to the time.

My story “The Molentstraat Music Festival” from the September 2015 issue of Asimov’s is a finalist in the Asimov’s Readers’ Poll and also in the Aurealis Awards. That’s pretty cool. I’m hoping it will also get on the ballot for New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Award.

As Shadows on the Snow, with Kendall from Decembernightskies, we’ve also had more music come out this year. Feels like something for another blog post.

I do need to update my website. Seriously. Need to learn more about marketing. And discoverability. Also that garden that needs one or two weeds (or more) pulled.

So, even with a few glitches of my own making, I’m happy with this start to the year. How is yours going?

Year end review, with a late rally

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Close to the end of the year, close to completing some goals, distant from others.
 
My word-count goal went well: from 300,000 for the year (completed in August), upped then to 450,000 for the year (completed in November) and upped again to 500,000, and right now sitting at 497,065. Catastrophes aside, it looks like a slam dunk on that one. Yay.
 
Publishing 300,000 words didn’t go so great. It went pretty good – right now it’s around 203,000. Mostly self-published under my Triple V Publishing banner through Smashwords, Kindle, and CreateSpace/Amazon. It was gratifying to have several acceptances by publishers in there – about 26,000 words of that total were published in online and print magaziens such as MicroHorror, The Colored Lens and Takahe.
 
What about the other 97,000 words? Well, I sure wrote them. Part of it was procrastination: sitting on a 60,000 word New Zealand Literary novel instead of sending it out to some publishers (and then self-publishing it if it came back as noes). I’ll remedy that in the new year, with my new goals. Part of it was a pig-headed determination to keep things on the market – that is, numerous stories, novelettes and novellas that get rejected and go out again, rather than self-pubbing. I’ll fix that too: with some of the pieces that have been to the seven or eight main markets: the next time they come back I’ll pull them out of circulation and publish them through Triple V.
 
I felt like I spent much of the year feeling out in the wilderness: I’ve had more than a hundred rejection slips since January. Mostly form rejections, but there have been a few personal notes which has been cheering. The acceptances have helped out too – early in the year my sci-fi novella The Wreck of the Emerald Sky appeared in The Colored Lens. I had a few flash-fiction acceptances through the year, which was nice, but most of the longer works seemed to keep cycling. Then, a late rally. An acceptance for Takahe (a New Zealand literary mag), a third-placing in a regional short story contest, and an acceptance for Aurealis – one of Australia’s leading science fiction magazines. Coming just a couple of weeks before the end of the year, that acceptance has buoyed me no end: I am on the right track, and persistence pays (real money in this case, too).

Next year, I’m aiming at 500,000 words from the git-go. And aiming at publishing 600,000 (whether self- or traditional) – and have a plan in place to make the possible.

See you next year, with more goal updates.

450,000 and counting

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Back in July I hit my word-count goal for the year: 300,000 words written. Five months ahead of my timeline. The writing was made up of two novels, a couple of novellas and a bunch of short stories. Being so busy with tutoring, I hadn’t expected to hit the goal so early. It left me with the question of what to do for the rest of the year. So I re-drew the goal, adding on another 150,000 words, figuring that actually tutoring through the second part of the year is bigger than through the first part so didn’t want to push too hard.

Partway through November I hit that second goal, even with tutoring. Another novel written, another bunch of short stories. Another novella. 450,000 words for the year. So far.

I’ve written every day this year. October 6th was my best writing day – 6781 words. This might well be my highest daily word count ever. At least my highest ever with being sane and able the following day. Back in my younger years I might have tried for something higher, but turned into a gibbering mess the following day. June 18th was my lowest count at 152, though I did mark four assignments that day, as well a work my 8-5 job. I’d always planned for and accounted for tutoring to knock the daily word count down: what was important was to at least get some words written.

So I’m tacking on another 50,000 words to make it an even half million for the year. As I write this, it means another 1300ish words a day. Do-able, though I will have to push. No tutoring, but I am studying – taking Dean Wesley Smith’s Essentials Workshop which runs for six weeks from December 5th and that’s going to keep me busy. In a good way.

Moving the goalposts

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So I crossed the finish line. 300,000 words so far this year. Publishable? I hope. Some have been published already – some self, some with small presses, some have been accepted for upcoming publication and others are out with editors. As I wrote during my evening block of writing time I knew I would cross the line – I had 586 words to go. (This is how I’ve kept track of that – click to see the whole thing – a bunch of numbers I fill in each day and let Excel calculate to get totals and percentages. The bottom right corner gives me the total):

but I kind of lost track as I became more engaged with the current story. I ended up writing over 1100 words for the session – a reasonable day. In some ways I was pleased to see that I continued on without even realising… for a few days I’d been wondering if I would kick back and just congratulate myself and fall into the habit of watching bad TV. As I wrote a few days ago, I’ve reset the goal, and I think that will help keep me on track and motivated.

The spreadsheet above might seem a little OCD (I don’t scrub my hands, though I see elements of needing to know numbers in me), but it’s helped me have my eyes on the target. That percentage figure in the bottom corner ticking over has helped me focus. I’m keeping that – it’s at 100.20% now, and I’ll let it go on up to 150%, but I’ve added in another little ticker beside it for the August to December goal in the bottom corner:

That’s going to challenge me. I’ll have to stay at around an average of 1000 words a day. While December is clear, there are four tutoring deadlines between now and the end of November and two of those will be full-on: six weeks of pretty intense reading and feedback. I don’t expect to get through a lot of writing during those weeks. Still, I might play catch-up through December. The plan is to write The Deluge, the second part of The Hidden Dome trilogy, between the last day of tutoring and the last day of the year. That’ll be more like 2000 words a day.

One finish line in sight, another beckons

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My writing goal for the year is 300,000 words. Accounting for other activities (mostly the time commitment of tutoring), that seemed like a reasonable goal. Right now I’ve completed just over 290,000. Whoops. It looks like I’m about hit my year end goal around the last day in July. Now I need some new goals, or milestones.

Part of the idea of the goal came from Jeff Ambrose. Jeff redraws his approach as he goes too – pretty inspiring.

Here’s how this year’s writing comes out so far:

Two novels written. One (The Tunnel) edited and published as a POD book, and as an ebook, and the other (working title Steel Wagon), currently being proofed. That one’s a literary novel, so I’m sending to a New Zealand agent to see what kind of response it gets. If it doesn’t filter through that system, I’ll similarly self-publish it as a POD and ebook.

Sixteen stories written. These range in length from flash (two) to novellas (two), with most sitting between 6000 and 12,000 words. Five of these have been published, along with another three stories from last year. Four of the stories have been published by magazines/ezines (MicroHorror, Flashes in the Dark and The Colored Lens), the rest have been self-published through Smashwords, mostly under pen names. I’ve also re-published numerous short stories through Smashwords, but as reprints they don’t count towards first publication goals (I’m aiming for publishing 300,000 words as well, in addition to any reprints – sitting at 120,000 so far). I have one story in updating (ie, it’s been edited and proofed and just needs those corrections made), one in proofing, and one in progress. I am still proofing the second novel, but have the first 5000 words about ready to go to an agent.

New goal: 300,000 words by the end of July. Steel Wagon 5000 word sample and synopsis with an agent by August 11th. New literary story completed by 15th August (specifically for the Sunday Star contest). And set a new word-count target for the rest of the year.

I already know that I’ll be writing the second book in The Hidden Dome trilogy (working title – The Deluge) later this year (probably after tutoring finishes in late November), so that’s 60,000 words, more or less. But what to do for August through November?

Well, there is tutoring, so that cuts into time a little. During the last main block my daily writing, usually over 1000 words, slipped down like an eel in a pipe. 132 words on my lowest day. Still, four months is around 120 days, so perhaps 100,000 words is realistic. Combined with the novel, that will put me over 450,000 words for the year. Sounds about right.

Finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 3 Comments

I’m a finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. There’s a press release about the current finalists, and that’s my name right there amongst them. Me. Wow. I’m feeling stunned by the news. There is still that next big hurdle – to actually win one of the prizes (and I’m not holding my breath; so often I have been “the bridesmaid and never the bride”) – but it feels very encouraging. It’s as if I’m on the right track. Kind of like how excited I was to get a personal rejection from Asimov’s. It wasn’t an acceptance, but I got a sense of having jumped up a notch.

If I don’t win one of the top prizes, I’ll enter again, and keep entering until I’m no longer eligible* Writing fiction at this level has been a long time goal and it’s good to see that I’m going in the right direction.

In other news, my current total word count for the year is just about to hit the quarter million mark. 249,224. I’m coming to the end of this round of tutoring, which does slow the writing a little. My regular daily goal is 1000 words (you can see I average more), but during tutoring that’s slowed to an average of just under 300 (lowest day: 132, but I did get through a bunch of marking). You know what, though? Today, even with tutoring, I’m going to do at least 776 words and hit that quarter million word milestone.

Best of luck to the other finalists. (and thanks for your message, Martin).

*From the rules: the Contest is open only to those who have not professionally published a novel or short novel, or more than one novelette, or more than three short stories, in any medium. Professional publication is deemed to be payment, and at least 5,000 copies, or 5,000 hits. Despite my string of publications, I only have one at that professional level – a children’s radio story broadcast in New Zealand many years ago. Believe me, I’m working hard at getting more and, while I’d love to win Writers of the Future, I’d love to become ineligible too.

One day: three rejections

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

So while I’m busy writing (I’ve finished up the second novel, and completed a long short-story since I last posted), and tutoring (whew, almost at the end of round four) and, well, just life in general… I’m also busy submitting stories to magazines. Great news – I’ve had an acceptance (a sci-fi novella, coming out soon… more details on that to come). Yay.

Today, though, was one of those “oh, well” days. Three rejection letters. All form letters too. Along the lines of “Thank you for submitting but we regret that we cannot use your story at this time”. You know the kind of thing. So, I found some other magazines with current open submissions and sent those three off right away. Just because some editor doesn’t have space for my best, second best and third best stories, doesn’t mean someone else won’t.

Now, back to finishing up this last bit of tutoring, and writing the next story.

Disappearing posts… why did this vanish for a week?

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

Word count goal edging up – closing on 200,000
Posted on April 30, 2012 by Sean Monaghan
As April draws to a close, I’m closing on 200,000 words for the year. It would have been kind of neat to have made it – a tidy kind of 50,000 word average per month – but I’m still way ahead of where I’d expected to be… considering the aim was for 300,000 for the whole year. The total is 195,000 and change right now. I’m also well into the goal of what I would be writing: one novel completed (and published), a short novel completed (likewise, published – under a pen name), and several stories completed and out with various publishers. Right now I’m nearing the end of the second novel (this one a literary novel which I will be sending to agents). That’s got about another seven to ten thousand words to go, then I’ll be on to another SF story and a new young adult novel for one of my pen names. May will be a slower month with a heap of marking to do, but so far I’m pleased with the year.

Addendum: I know what I did wrong. I finally figured out how to change the url of the blog. I did that on the desktop. But, when posting from the Android tablet, that poor little machine was still looking for the old url to post to… so it recreated it and made the old url live again. The post was there the whole time for anyone to read.

Writing fast

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So it’s the end of March and I’m looking at where I am with my writing. My goal is to write 300,000 words during the course of the year. Publishable words, that is. Certainly the goal is changing as I go, and feedback on the rejections, the hold-requests and acceptances is helping with my focus (I did add into the goal that I also want to publish 300,000 words during the year – not counting reprints).

One thing I hadn’t figured on, however, was a big change in the structure of tutoring: much more online, more hours and more deadlines spread through the year. I had been looking at having big blocks of time between the portfolios to really focus on writing, and those blocks have turned out to be very small. This spread has, at the moment, meant that I’m writing alongside the tutoring and so, somehow, still maintaining my minimum of 1000 words a day (I do have a day job as well as the part-time tutoring in case you think I’m just goofing off).

I have written a complete novel, seven stories of various lengths (from 665 words up to 13,000) and I’m currently half-way through the next novel. The first novel has been (self) published, as have four of the stories (two under pen names) – one of those on MicroHorror, rather than self-published (that’s the 665 word flash fiction piece). The other stories are on submission with publishers, or still being tinkered with (I might be writing pulp, but I’m going to fine-tune the literary story for the national competition).

So, a quarter of the way through the year and I’m just a little ahead of a quarter of my publishing target (80,000 words published) and more than halfway towards my total goal: more than 150,000 words written so far. I’m surprised, stunned and stoked that it’s going this well this early. I don’t know if I’ll manage another 150,000 in the next quarter (tutoring does hot-up a little), but the momentum is there. And I still have more ideas than I have time to write.

Writing well and writing badly

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As I progress through my “year of writing pulp”, I’m certainly learning a lot about myself as a writer. As with any writer, I have ups and downs and I have stories that are more successful (in the storytelling sense) than others. Sometimes it’s easy to feel down when a story isn’t working out. I begin to wonder if I’ll ever have another decent story in me. I guess I’m always measuring against my last best story. And that may be two or three (or more?) stories back.

The reality is that (as with most writers again) I feel like I’m getting better in general. See the graph of story quality here, with the zero to one hundred as the quality measure and the left to right as progress over time. In the early days most (ie, all) of my stories were lousy (say, a fifteen on the quality scale – at least they had reasonable grammar), but over time I’m getting better at the process of storytelling. Sometimes I stumble a little and drop down the quality line, but the general trend seems to be towards the upper end. (You understand, of course, that the ‘quality’ graph here is a purely arbitrary thing, for the sake of illustration. It’s not something I can measure in a scientific way).

This thought perhaps comes out of struggling with a chapter of my new novel that felt dead and lifeless and was a struggle to write; and then going into the next chapter which almost burned up my keyboard it was coming out so fast and easily. A novel is different to a story (that dull-ish chapter has a place in terms of pace and the mindset of the character), though I can see how some of my stories might have been dullish in places (or right through).

Pace is still something I’m learning about – recent rejection letter feedback suggested that one of my longer stories, while very good, did “drag quite a bit in quite a few places”. That’s kind of the opposite to some other feedback on another story (an accepted one – “Pan Am 617 Heavy”, which you can read here at Bewildering Stories) that pointed out (rightly) that the story was “somewhat relentless: the action is non-stop and neither the characters, nor the reader, seem to get a moment to breathe” (I’m paraphrasing those comments here). That kind of feedback certainly informa how I’m looking at my action/pulp stories now: time to breathe without dragging. It seems like good writing advice all around.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to improving on my last best story.