Of course I keep a Writing Log. A log of writing I do for specific projects, not blog/LJ/Journaling. I've written--or documented having written, I should say, since I know some days I didn't log it--on 71 of the past 156 days. That's 46% of days. On those 71 days I've written a total of 27,981 words. This is the current state of five works:

A: 20,586 (first draft nearly complete, but needs drastic editing and scene repair)

B: 10,892 (less than half complete)

C: 2,018 (essentially complete. Four drafts done, but needs another.)

D: In my head. Sketching/plotting

E: In my head. Sketching/plotting

These of course do not add up to 27,981 words but 33,496. This is because I have failed to log a few days, and also the writing began before I got the idea to log things diligently. I also have a strict regimen of the number of words I'm required and allowed to write each day. I'm not allowing myself to go crazy and write 2,000 words in one day because I'm worried I'll burn out if I do that, or dry out my wells. I really wanted to write more today. The words were coming right out of me.

Story A was not nearly complete three days ago. I had plotted more, and anticipated that it would expand to 30 or 40 thousand words! But I suddenly found an ending. Or the ending just happened. Which means, actually, that I'll have to do another draft, adding various elements and foreshadowings etc into it.

D is like...Poe on cyberpunk. "Amontillado!"  E is a dystopian thought experiment.

I tend to write dark depressing stuff where rocks fall and everyone dies.

Tags: writing
Current Music: Red Sparowes - Buildings Began to Stretch Wide Across the Sky, and the Air Filled with a Reddish Glo

Now my major story has exceeded nine thousand words; my initial projection of twelve thousand turned out to be way off. I now think that this thing will turn out to be a novella, or a very long short story. I wonder sometimes if I am writing too much, if I am spending too much time on any given detail. That will come out when I re-read, I suppose. At this point I refuse to read back over it while I'm in the writing of it. I don't want to throw myself into agony over this or that word or sentence or scene, not until I've got the whole story down on paper.

I started another work also. Nothing major, but I need a break from my main piece some days, but I don't want to not write at all.

Tags: writing
Current Music: Stars of the Lid - Articulate Silences, Pt. 2

Life is o.k.
I'm happy to report that I'm going well with my resolutions for the year. Especially the one that goes "write every day." After fooling around with what works best for me, I've set the goal to write 300 words a day. This is modest as hell but reachable, and since I set this as my daily work goal I've only missed one day. Some days I do more, but typically I stop at 300, even leaving sentences unfinished (which gives me something immediate to get into when I start again).

Since I meet my goal every day, I feel accomplished all the time and optimistic, etc. I might bump it up to 400 or 500, but not much more. I'm exhausted on weekdays still, even with the re-tooled schedule which leaves me with more energy. Today I went to the store after work then crashed on the bed in all my clothes until 6:30, then headed to the coffee shop (where I am now) and wrote 300 words together with vegging out on the internet.

Another thing that is helping me write is that I don't worry about word choice or editing as I write. Only rarely do I restructure a sentence or stop and think about the unfolding of the narrative. I have a plot outline and I'm going with that. This isn't to say that I don't make new discoveries about the characters or the narrative as I go--I've learned a lot as I write, ideas often come in a rush--but I work them in in the heat of the moment, or else make a note somewhere of my discovery. But if I did worry about clause structure and rhythm and accidental rhymes as I went then I'd never get anything done. That used to be my problem when I wrote fiction in the past, and why I never finished anything. I'd break into a sweat and agonize over every line, every word and whimper that this was just too hard and could not be done.

When I've gotten to the end, that is when I will go back to edit. Then and only then.

I have one well-plotted story right now, 4,100 words are written of a projected 12,000. Another semi-plotted (mostly in my head) adventure/sword & sorcery story, about 3,700 words written and I have no idea how long that one will be. That's actually kind of pathetic, I should have more completed than this, but it has only been recently, since the new semester actually that I've been writing really in earnest, every day.

I'm also interested in the possibility of writing a narrative completely in the second person. How often has that been accomplished?

I'm also interested in the idea of writing collaboratively, writing and dropping the thread to have someone else pick it up and take it somewhere. Maybe a group blog.

Tags: life in general, writing
Current Music: Red Sparowes - Alone and Unaware, the Landscape was transformed in Front of Our Eyes

Reading The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner, and on p.65 he says, "No fiction can have real interest if the central character is not an agent struggling for his or her own goals but a victim, subject to the will of others." and I began to wonder if this is true and if, it being a real problem, the tale I'm 'writing' is subject to being boring. I want to look at the protagonist through a haze; he is supposed to be mysterious to the reader, as he is mysterious to me. I don't want him passive or intend it as much as I don't want anyone to see him fighting for anything. I want the reader to be left unsure whether he ever did fight for anything or ever did do anything, or whether he was a mere spectator and a pawn.

again, he says: "Slowly, painstakingly, with the patience that separates a Beethoven from men of equal genius but less divine subbornness, the great writer builds the large, rockfirm thought that is his fiction." (p.70) Which reiterates my belief that what separates the writer from the non-writer is nothing other than the writing itself. Writers write; non-writers don't. It isn't so much a matter of technique or talent. It is in the doing.

Tags: writing
Current Music: Sigur Ros - Saeglópur

Let me write on something a little more happy than my entries of late. One, in spite of everything, I've been fighting to have a life outside of work, outside of school. this is very important. I'm doing this because I at least wanted a break from graduate school, but I'm no less busy, and lacking the amenity of taking a coffee break with a colleague to discuss the gaze in Roman literature. So teaching so far hasn't helped me recharge and rejuvenate. But look, I'm being negative. This is about good things!

So first of all I've been maintaining a reading schedule. I keep track of how many pages I read each day in a spreadsheet. It's my goal to read, before the year is out, the following books:

Resurrection (Tolstoy)
Natasha's Dance (figes)
Alexander the Great (Lane Fox)
The Writing Life
The Objects of Art (Wollheim)
Gracchi to Nero (Scullard)
Alexander to Actium (Greene)
Roman Revolution
Julius Caesar (Grant)
Literary Theory vsi
The Professor and the Madman
Baudolino (Eco)

And one or two others, they are escaping me. I usually read when I get home, provided I have the energy. This is an ambitious reading list, considering I have maybe an hour or two a day to read. Finishing would require reading 55 pages a day...

I've also started a group called Society for the Appreciation of Books in Spoken Form - Greensboro Chapter. Long ago, when I lived here before, Christian, Charlotte and I got an idea to read aloud to one another, amidst foods cooked by Christian (primarily because he is really an artisan of food). this didn't really ever happen for a certain reason, but we did read some Gibbon. So far this new group is coming along slowly, but meeting primarily through my insistence. Hopefully I can draw further members in, but I don't know many people in this town anymore--those I do know are involved in their own affairs, etc. So far we've read Virgil, Borges, T. Williams, E. Wharton, Mimnermus, others.

I'm also reading Tristan and Iseut every night on the phone to my girlfriend. yep, I have a real girlfriend finally. It's a scandalous tale. But she's the Perfect One, and i'm in love like I'm 17 again.

What else? Oh, I'm writing. I got so excited about writing when I thought I wouldn't get a job that I couldn't put the pencil down. I'm still not in the habit of writing every single morning though, but that's what i'm working on, getting up at 4 or 5 and writing. At this point, I'm like, "I have to do this, because there is no way i can keep teaching. This is what I am, this is what I will do." So i'm doing it, with mixed results--I'm not writing anything brilliant, but I'm getting the practice in, getting back into that rythym I used to have. And the more I write, the more ideas I get; I discover things and imagine more. stories and dreams, having lain dormant for a while, are breating once again and stirring inside me.

Tags: life in general, writing