The Measure of Success
By Kathleen Bolton | October 31, 2006 |
‘Twas the day before NaNo, and writers everywhere
Are cracking their knuckles and pulling out their hair . . . .
As you can see, poetry’s not my bag, that’s more Therese’s forte. Still, the anticipation in the air lends itself to flowery language. Motors are revving for the big NaNo race to . . . . what end?
Ah yes. 50,000 words. Half a novel.
I’ll be the first one to crow mercilessly if I actually achieve 50,000 words this month. My usual pace is 2-3 pages on a bad day, 4-5 on a good. But to get to 50,000 in 30 days, means doing 6.66 manuscript pages a day (make that 7 for the superstitious). That’s assuming you don’t cheat. Or take a day off. And what if you don’t meet the goal? What, really, is the measure of success?
Some days it’s getting one coherent sentence down. Other days, it’s just showing up. Much rarer are the days ripping out 10 pages that you know will need minimal editing. I used to get really down on myself if all I did was spend the morning staring at the blank screen. But now I realize that the staring and the mulling and the hating and the indecision are part and parcel with writing. Some days have to be spent drooling on the keyboard like a lobotomized mental patient before the brain engages.
NaNo isn’t going to leave much space for these sorts of days. So if you happen to have one during the month of November, don’t beat yourself up. You can come here and moan about it. I’ll be doing the same thing.
Happy Halloween!
Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.
She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.
50K words is half a novel? It’s a whole novel for me. Novels are too long. My absolute limit is about 500 pages. Preferrably 300. If you can’t tell a story in that number of pages you’re spending too much time on set-up, going crazy with details, floating too much in the character headspace, or some other such nonsense (my humble opinion).
I think the ideal novel length for the Video Game Generation is 120 – 200 pages. That about matches up perfectly with NaNo!
Did you guys get your Wordcount Widgets?
https://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/cjaycontent/index.php?id=77
I mostly agree, Eric, the the length of most commercial fiction is too long, bloated, etc. But most pubs regard 85,000 to 120,000 words a saleable length. 100,000 words = 400 MS pages (at 250 words a page). So that’s what I shoot for, 400 pages.
And thanks for the widget link. I’m checking it out next!
Good luck with NaNo. I’ll be knee-deep in edits for my novel during November. :)
Excuuuuse me. 50,000 words is half a novel? Us, down here, in children’s fiction land think 50k makes an action packed middle grade novel.
Hate speech, I say, politically insenstive hate speech!
I think if one ignores the inner critic productivity can soar. It’s hard for me to do it, but my goal for NaNo is to let go of all those worries about wordsmanship, historical accuracy, unclear motivations, marketability, etc…, that usually hamper my first draft process. Just get ideas out and have fun with them, for a change. What a novel concept! (…um, sorry about that–just couldn’t resist, must be too much Halloween chocolate…)
Whoops, wet noodle slash taken, S. William. I’d forgotten that in the YA markets, 50,000 words is just right.
Sorry! :-(