11 November 2004

Lean Mean Prose Machine

Phew. Having worried enormously last Monday that I hadn't reached my chapter-a weekend target for the novella and was therefore going to crash very slowly but with great inevitability into my end-of-January deadline, I came home from work today and -- with the aid of food and coffee redoubtably provided by the wonderful B. -- wrote nearly 1,100 words straight off. (Admittedly 100 of those words are an H.G. Wells quote, but hey, it all fills up the page.)

Now my head has fallen off, but I'm very happy -- the way I've been performing recently, a thousand words is about what I expect from a full day's work. Maybe I'm finally getting the hang of my narrator's abstruse style. Certainly I should have no trouble in hitting my next chapter-in-a-weekend target, which means I'm hopefully on course to finish a fair draft by New Year and to spend January revising and polishing. Hurrah.

My main concern now is to try and get a decent night's sleep with all that coffee inside me. Whisky may be in order.

(Quick straw poll: When I go on about writing in this much depth, is it irritatingly whingey and solipsistic? Or does it form an invaluable insight into the creative process? Maybe it's just an invaluable insight into how whingey and solipsistic writers are. Do let me know.)

No comments:

Post a Comment

(Please sign comments -- it helps keep track of things. Offensive comments may occasionally be deleted, and spam definitely will be.)