About 84,500 words as of a few minutes ago.
For the past three days, I've been following some writing advice from my friend Cory Doctorow. I have an extremely difficult time sticking to a plan of action for more than a day or two, so the fact that I'm on day three is encouraging. Twenty minutes is about the outside limit of my concentration on anything with which I'm having trouble. Even though my ADDistractible mind thinks it's going to be literally an eternity of drudgery, I know that if I start, I can write for twenty uninterrupted minutes once a day and it'll barely feel as though any time has passed. I'm getting wonderdread to pace me. I tell him when I'm about to start, and he works alongside me as I put in my twenty minutes. My daily word count is less this way, but it means I'm way more likely to write every day, instead of what's been happening, which is that I drag myself through a thousand or two words, exhaust the relevant brain chemicals, and then it's days or weeks before I have enough concentration to write again. 400 words a day for a year is the equivalent of a novel and a half a year, which is potentially a living wage. 1,000 words every three weeks is, lessee...perhaps two short stories in a year; maybe $100 to $500 total. Doing less work in a day is counterintuitive, but the math adds up. If I do the 20 minutes of writing early in the day, I can go about the rest of the day's work and play with a peace of mind on which I can't put a price. Fact is, when writing is your career, the actual writing is the smallest fraction of what you do. The rest is all the stuff of managing a career, such as doing research, reading and responding to students' manuscripts, filing, answering the phone, paperwork, outreach, travel. Not to mention the self-maintenance stuff of making and eating meals, doing housework, running errands, etc.
Some of today's writing, inna rough draft stylee:
"How much a day you make working the pitch?"
She named her figure. It was so low I knew is the bare truth she was talking.
"I'll pay you that," I said. She turned a suspicious face to me. "Only for your time here talking to us," I made haste to say. "Nothing more. Then I'll send for your Lev to come fetch you, if he will, and I'll pay him the same."
She turned full to face me, as the moon turning from new to thrice-fierth. If the moon had flushed red cheeks and a well defiant aspect.
"Lev is to work today," she told me. "After that, he'll need to see to our Ma. You sha'n't pay two of us for work when only one of us does it."
Our Ma. Lev might be her brother, then, not her man. I bowed my head in agreement of her contract. "Honest Maidell," I said. "As you will, then. But will you do us the honour of remaining? Is honest work, I swear it."
