Ginormous Word Counts Catch-Up Post (August-January)

[lizvogel]

Have I really not done this since... July? I can't find one later than July that isn't a NaNo post.

Mind you, a lot of that's because I didn't do much writing for much of that time. And when I did, I'd pretty much abandoned the idea of word count as a metric; it wasn't what I needed while finishing up Falling From Ground (quite the opposite, in fact), and outside of NaNo I've pretty much been in "recovery" mode since then. Oh yeah, and there were technology troubles. However, I do like having the numbers rounded up in one easily-tracked tag, so I shall now dive down the rabbit hole of my record-keeping.

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Okay, I'm back. *pant, pant*

August:
Falling From Ground = 1141

September:
Falling From Ground = 17
original short fiction = 489 ("and then the murders started", mostly the short version)

October
Falling From Ground = 502

November was NaNo 2018. 'Nuff said.

December:
original short fiction = 124

January:
original short fiction = 2616


January (and December) is entirely "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey". Which is, hey, done!

Speaking of rabbit holes, the writing of DD,JJ was essentially done a week ago; the time since then has mostly gone to working out tedious details about spaceship propulsion systems and asteroid orbital dynamics. The asteroids particularly were challenging; it seems that there's just enough known about many of them to get me into trouble if I don't fact-check, and not enough for me to be sure of my facts. I did finally find an orbit simulator that told me more or less what I needed, but the process sucked down an amazing amount of time and ambition. I'm only just now recovering the "yay! finished!" feeling I should have when completing a brand new story that I'm pretty happy with.


Also, there was querying!

December:
Sent: 2 queries
Agents set aside for another book in a different genre: 1
Crossed off: 3, I think?

January:
Sent: 7
Crossed off: 28

Which is great! Except that I was supposed to finish the final due-diligence push on Highway of Mirrors in January, and it's... not finished. For a while there, it was going pretty well, in large part because I'm only querying agents I'm genuinely keen to work with; if I'm meh or I find I'm trying to talk myself into them, off the list they go. But querying is all too easily bumped by writing (okay) or a certain non-writing project (not so good), and so I've run aground again.


What's next? I don't even know; I think that's going to merit a post of its own.


(admin note: first use of new tag for short fiction, because cramming it in under "writing" is... unhelpful.)

Comments

[duskpeterson]

Asteroid orbital simulators? Oh my gosh, and I thought "Checking the moonrise and weather conditions for April 17, 1912" was bad enough.

[lizvogel]

;-) All I really needed was an Asteroid A that my spacefarin' adventurer could leave from, and an Asteroid B for him to be headed toward, and for them not to be on opposite sides of the solar system or anything, to keep the travel time believable. Unfortunately, nobody catalogs asteroids like that (imagine!), so I ended up picking a couple because I liked the names, then checking orbit simulators to see if they were in the same general neighborhood.

I'm sure some pedant will still find a nit to pick, but at least they'll have to work harder. :->

Ha, moonrise is something I now always check, after an early beta reader complained that the moon wouldn't be how I described it at the time in question. It had never previously occurred to me that anyone would know or care!

[fjbryan]

Seems like you've been making some amazing progress. Happy start to 2019!

[lizvogel]

It doesn't feel like amazing progress! (Though I am pleased about the short story, and it's already out in its first slush pile, so that's good.) I am so far behind where I planned to be at this point that I've had to abandon the plan entirely and re-plan.

I was actually at a presentation on goal-setting for writers last night, which included breaking down long-term goals into monthly targets. Goal 1 was easy and obvious, goal 2 was not easy but still obvious... but then goal 3 was hands-in-the-air I-don't-even, and goal 4 devolved into "which kind of failure do I want to set myself up for?" And that was just the writing goals, which are an unfortunately small sub-set of the Stuff I Need To Make Happen.

And today I am a vegetable. Sorry to rant; I'm going to STFU and go exercise now. ;-p

[fjbryan]

I know what you mean. My short term deadlines are eating my long term plans every meal of the day. I'm trying to rebalance a little at a time...I cleaned one office this week, and I hope to get the other one done in the next 3 days. All of that is necessary to getting anything written again.

[lizvogel]

Ah, yes. A clean, well-ordered workspace is the sign of a sick mind a very helpful thing, writing-wise.