Weekly Word Count: March 5

What Is This?

Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is add up the “words” column and I’m good to go. This article will be counted, minus the first 150 words. However, it will be counted in the following week’s total. All other blog posts and creative writing count full credit. Copyediting for other writers is counted at ten percent of the starting word count for the document; style sheets for that copyediting will count twenty-five percent. Editing my own work, if and when I get to that point, will count fifty percent of the starting word count.

How Did I Do?

My weekly goal is 2,000 words. This week, I clocked in at a whopping 5,541 words! Yes, that’s a record for one week.¹ In addition to three blog posts, I added almost 3,000 words to Darklight. Most of that will probably be moved or removed in revision, but if nothing else, it helped me provide a lot of backstory for my protagonists. I still have a couple scenes to write for them in Chapter 3, after which I’ll introduce the antagonist and start building some suspense.

• “Weekly Word Count: February 26″ – blog post – 668 words
• “O, Canada!” – blog post – 887 words
• Darklight – part 2 of Chapter 2 and part 1 of Chapter 3 – 2,914 words
• “National Grammar Day: A Quiz” – blog post – 1,071 words

About Darklight

You’ve seen me mention Darklight on several occasions; some of you are probably wondering, “What the hell IS it?” Darklight is my nascent novel. At least, I think it’s going to be a novel; hence, the italicized title. Right now, it has elements of mystery, suspense, and science fiction, as well as a hint of romance. (Actually, now that I think of it, the s-f hasn’t appeared yet, but there have been very subtle hints along that line.)

I seriously doubt it will go anywhere other than to a few good friends, but I’m enjoying the exercise, when I can get motivated to actually write. A few things I’ve learned are that to write well, you need to read. And–this may come as a shock–one actually must write to make any progress at all. The most interesting thing, to me at least, is that while I knew I was pretty ignorant about this whole “how to write” bit, the vast breadth and depth of my ignorance is truly awesome. Awesome, in the sense that “awe” is “fear mixed with dread, veneration, reverence, or wonder.”²

It strikes me that I am probably about three decades late in starting this creative writing venture; on the other hand, it’s not like I can put it off for another three decades, either. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortuitously), all the wonderful stories I had in my head over the years seem to have evaporated. However, because I prefer to look on the positive side, there should be that much more room for new ideas, no?