Killer day today.
For reading, I finally got back on the wagon. I picked up in IDW’s TMNT Vol. 10.
For data analysis and marketing—no work today.
For production, I ended up hitting my quota yesterday after all. I did about 2800 words yesterday.
Today, I also hit my quota at about 2900 words. I finished a new short story called “The Goddess of Justice.” It is now ready for my editor, which I’ll probably send this weekend. It’ll go out to magazines next week.
Also, I passed my monthly quota of 84,000 words per month today. Everything I write until Friday at midnight will be pure surplus. Also, I’ll be counting my blog posts at the end of each month, so I’ll also get a 10,000 word bump to my surplus on Friday night. Even better.
(I’m including blog posts only because the words are published. Plus, many of you have been encouraging me to do this for years, but I’ve resisted. I think it’s fair to include blog posts as long as the content is helpful to folks in some way.)
As many of you know, I am trying to write 1.2 million words over the next year. This requires a lot of planning, concentration, and effort. It is not for the faint of heart.
Writing one million words (or more) is what Dean Wesley Smith calls “Pulp Speed.” Pulp speed is the ability to write lightning-fast in the style of the old pulp writers. These writers wrote millions of words each year without fail. Quite frankly, they would write many of us under the table.
As Dean Wesley Smith puts it, if you want to write at pulp speed, you have to be able to write quickly and tell one story after the other.
If you want to write at pulp speed, it often means little to no downtime between books. Many of us view finishing a book as a monumental achievement and a cause for celebration. I once had a writer friend who said, “I finished my book, took a long sigh, and nine months later, I started writing again.”
I think we can all relate to that collective sigh. But you can't do that if you want to be a pulp writer. You have to keep going.
To write one million words per year, you must write at least 2,750 words every day without fail (84,000 words per month, or 252,000 per quarter). If you miss even a few days, the math gets brutal.
I am hitting my 2,750-word quota almost every day. No problem there. Some days, I am significantly higher than my quota, which helps me on the days when I fall behind. All of that is easy to solve for.
Here's the difficulty: determining what to write next when you write really fast. For example, I finished my current short story in less than two days. I finished my short story at noon today with 1,600 words for my daily word count, which meant that I still had to come up with an additional 1100 words to write for the day to keep on track for pulp speed.
Did I have to start something new today? No, but if I want the math to work in my favor, I have to start something new most of the time. That's a big adjustment.
I view this as a fun problem to solve, but I imagine that this is daunting for those writers who can hit the daily word count but need constant ideas and inspiration to get there.
Writing the next book is certainly the best way to get there, but the problem lies between books. Like I said, you can't take breaks, so if you finish a book at 9AM, you've got to fill the rest of the day with meaningful, publishable words.
Like I said, very fun. At least for me.
This is one of the major reasons I have been writing more short stories lately—short stories help me “fill the space” between books when I am not quite ready to write the next one yet. For example, I need to start the next Beast Mode book, which is about author marketing. I've been planning it, but I won't be ready to start the book until this weekend. If it weren't for short stories, I would be taking zero-word count days this week, which would make it all but impossible to write at pulp speed.
I know that some of you want to eventually work up to one million words or more per year, so I share these challenges out of transparency. I will probably write a book about this once I achieve the challenge (if I achieve the challenge).
Anyway, time to start the next short story.
YTD Word Count: 100,400
Plan: 1,252,000
Words Over/-Under Plan: 12,400
Days Ahead/-Behind: 4.51
Projected Annual Word Count: 1,398,600
Projected Decade Word Count: 13,986,000
Deadline 12/31/2023
Days to Go Until 12/31/23: 459
Word Count Average: 3,138
Average Pulp Speed: 1.8
