Since I Know You're All On The Edges Of Your Seats

Here's an update on my writing! :P

In all seriousness, I did start this blog as an outlet for my thoughts on writing and specifically my writing, so I'm going to assume this is a subject some of the people reading this might be interested in.

So for those just coming in, I'm currently working on a novel length work that I want to have working draft ready for the World Fantasy convention this year, which is in November and conveniently in Toronto this year. I'm going anyways and it would be really nice to have a novel I could pitch. Funny how having work to sell at a huge collection of editors and agents sounds like a good idea.

So how is the novel writing going you may ask? Really well actually. A couple months in I have over 40,000 words written, and I'm finding I'm averaging about 1000 words a day writing and managing to write about 5 days a week. What I'm saying is, I'm making steady progress and I've improved my writing speed to the point I'm averaging double the amount I was about a year ago. So, win for me.

This improvement became apparent the last few days when I sat down to write a short story. In three days, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I wrote a 4,000 word-plus short for a collection that has a submission due date of Aug 1. The only reason I took time away from my novel was because it's for an anthology due soon about an interesting subject. I'm not going to state which anthology it's for, at least not until and if my submission is accepted for publication.

A year ago a story of that size would have taken me at least a week to write, if not longer. Also, when I sat down to write the story I had a vague idea of what I wanted to write and in less than three days I was able to pounded out a workable draft.

Even better than this, pounding out said draft wasn't as torturous as it would have been in the past. Writing used to be a lot harder/a lot more work for me. Now, while it's still work, it's a lot more fun, and it was a nice break from the novel.

Now, none of this means my writing is any better than it was a year ago. I hope it is, but ultimately quality will be determined by editors who want to buy my writing and by the public that consumes it. Until that happens I'll just have to keep plugging away at it.