Writing – word-count – progress

From time to time, we hear writers talking about how many words they’ve written ‘today’. 

Some writers say that a book has taken months or even years to write. But in all probability it hasn’t. The writer wasn’t spending all hours on that book. The work was interrupted by ‘life’ – family, friends, work that pays the bills, holidays, and a multitude of other commitments that get in the way.

Writing a novel, I feel, is work, not play. Enjoyable work, granted. But it should be treated the same as ‘work’. 

The normal working day consists of eight hours. Yes, I’m sure that many writers spend eight hours in any particular day working on their book – that is, thinking, researching, juggling words and phrases, tweaking, and even writing new material.

For quite a while now, I’ve advocated that it’s helpful to keep a record of progress, and one of the ways to do that is by using a spreadsheet.

I write in ‘sessions’ – they may be for an hour, 2 hours, or even 30 minutes. I record each time period session. When the sessions add up to 8 hours, I call that a ‘day’.

For interest, I’ve looked back on my latest work, The Khyber Chronicle, which has just hit 45,000 words (about 35,000 to go!)

For the last 5 days of work (that is, 5 x 8-hour sessions), the word-count came out thus:

Day     word-count

1          5895

2          4816

3          5189

4          4975

5          8231

I go into this aspect of calculating word-count on pp18-19 in Write a Western in 30 Days – with plenty of bullet points! (Suitable for not only writers of westerns, but writers of all genre fiction). There are a few good reasons to apply this method. It isn’t the only method, it may not be the best, but it works for me.

Naturally, writing the requisite number of words is only the beginning. Then comes the self-edit, the checks for logic, plot holes, lack of description and all the rest. But getting the words down in the first place is the most important part. Something to build on, to hone thereafter.

Good luck!

Writing - self-edit - repeated words

My latest ‘completed’ book hit a little over 126,000 words. 
 

[I’ve put ‘completed’ in quotes because a book is never finished, it’s abandoned after you’ve done all you can to polish it. Looking at it again after even a small gap of time, you’ll always find the need to change things. This constant pressure to perfect the work will mean it will never see the light of day. Be bold. Do the necessary re-reads, self-edits and then let it go.]

Part of the self-edit process is to identify commonly repeated words; these may differ for every writer.

The words I’ve noticed I’m prone to over-using are listed below. They’re not exhaustive, naturally. The number of times the words appeared in a search of the text are shown (and in brackets the number they were reduced to after checking); I never blanket change, that can lead to nonsense words cropping up.

The reduction of repetitions can be processed in various ways: often, the word isn’t necessary at all; sometimes the dialogue is sufficient; if repetitions are close together on the page then I find a new word.

I've made additional comments at the end.

My repetition word list

Smiled – 55 (invariably overused) (15)

Nodded – 115 (again, overused, often close together on the page!) (44)

Laughed – 24 (this is good, I made a conscious effort while writing to avoid using this!) (14)

Grinned – 27 – (not bad, either, since it is very common usage) (11)

Sighed – 11 (again, I was on the look-out for this while writing so they are few) (7)

Looked – 48 (35)

Moment – 81 (45)

Glanced – 61 (30)

Few – 84 (53)

Down – 163 (103) (e.g. why use ‘sat down’ when ‘sat’ works as well?)

Up – 255 (horrendous! Search entails a space in front of and after this word) (163)

Out – 252 (same applies as above…) (176)

Back – 105 (ditto) (91)

Just – 70 (an insidious word, but often used in speech so many retained) (45)

Called – 52 (45)

Saw – 23 (21)

Walked – 41 (0)

Ran – 52 (35)

Pointed – 45 (0)

Suddenly – 15 (not bad, but probably too many) (3)

Seemed – 122 (86)

Felt – 77 (often the feelings can be conveyed without using ‘felt’) (49)

Thought – 60 (50)

Though – 101 (I've noticed in other books that sometimes this is used when the writer meant 'thought' and vice versa) (84)

Shrugged – 25 (again, while writing I tried to avoid using this, but it can still be reduced) (15)

Stepped – 60 (surprised at this, but this number was reduced) (36)

Turned – 103 (far too many!) (82)

Shook – 58 (not a big reduction, but I validated them all) (46)

Appeared – 27 (25)

Peered – 37 (32)

Some – 139 (another insidious word!) (77)

Abruptly – 29 (used instead of ‘suddenly’ sometimes) (17)

Eyed – 30 (instead of ‘looked at’ etc) (27)

Gazed – 3 (2)

Comment

In the scheme of things, very few of these repetitions are too bad when you consider the total number of words is in excess of 126,000. But the process serves to validate the text from a different perspective.

Naturally, there’s a need to be careful about substituting with a new word only to find that the ‘new’ word is a repetition you’ve already reduced!

This is only one strategy in the self-edit process. I normally do this after the final read-through. That read should concentrate on the narrative flow, the internal logic of the story, and detecting any inconsistencies.

Earlier read-throughs or self-edits will have considered point-of-view aspects, emotional content in a scene, character motivation and visualisation of a scene, to name a few.

Happy self-editing!

Writing - number crunching 3

 

Both Jen and I are slowly recovering from the dread virus, though neither has much voice most of the time. Our daughter Hannah is also on the mend, but it will take longer after pneumonia, but she is up and about, and driving, and coping with Darius and Suri.

The progress with the book.

It is all-but finished; just a final beta read to be done. [A book is never finished, however; it is let go. I haven't reached the 'let-go' point yet, but it is close.]

The word-count continuing from last post is here (for interest):

March
9 - 732 words
10 - 1148
11 - 1520
12 - 375
13 - 2191
14 - 1797
15 - 1945
16 - 1437
17 - 2288
18 - 2569
19 - 1426 plus map drawing!
20 - 1035
21 - 590
22 - 446
23 - 639
24 - 216
25 - 467
26 - minus 101
27 - 205

Total words since January 1 = 49k.

Although I 'finished' the book on 18 March, I knew there would be additional text to write as I began self-editing. Some of the lower word-counts from March 21 reflect the self-editing time spent. I'm now going through the book to rationalize word-repetition. So far, the repetitions of particular words have not been excessive, considering the final word count! This process may add words, or even remove several (being considered redundant).

Total words for the novel = about 126,000.

Synopsis and blurb written. Just the proposed cover-design to rough out for the publisher, who of course has the final say.

... and then it's on to the next book, which also has a deadline (which has slipped due to the reported illness etc)

Writing - number crunching-2

Further to my previous blog, I continued to improve on my daily word-count once the antibiotics kicked in:

March
4 - 1948
5 - 2156
6 - 2414
7 - 306
8 - 579

For January through to today, I've written about 29,000 words for this particular book. Not as much as I'd planned, due to a variety of circumstances, but the end is near.

Why the sudden drop on 7 March...? Our daughter Hannah, who has the same virus, was rushed to hospital with pneumonia. She is on the mend, being well looked after. Jen and I have our two grandchildren staying with us now, and we take them to nursery/school each morning, and collect them in the afternoons; and feed the two dogs and three cats... Family comes first, it goes without saying. The children have been very good.