Daily Word Count

So, last week, I finished the first draft of my novel, Mythic America. It ended up being close to 94,000 words long, which was 14,000 words more than what I was aiming for. It’s also pretty bloated, too, and when I edit it, I know that there will be lots cut from it. My second draft will be leaner, and stronger for it. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I started this novel during NaNoWriMo last year. I made a great effort to finish it after NaNo was done. And during the past few months, I set myself the goal of writing every day until I was finished. Well, really, I just set the goal of writing every day. I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Anyway, I’ve tried writing every day in the past, and was never very successful at it. This time around, however, I was, and I think I figured out why.

We all hear pro and self-published authors tell newbies that the first rule of writing is that you need to write, every single day, no matter what. Rain or shine, birthday or holiday, in-laws or dirty house, in sickness and in health, till death do you in.

That’s all well and good, but almost none of them tell you how to do it. Well, I figured out the secret.

It’s all about word count.

I know that right now, you’re screaming at the monitor, “but, Chris, I’ve been told not to worry about word count and just to write!”

Well, yeah, sure, that’s true. I’m not denying that. But, what that really means is, don’t worry about the word count of your story, just write it. For example, though I had a goal of 80,000 words, I didn’t let it constrain me. I didn’t try to force my story to fit in those 80,000 words when it wouldn’t. I just wrote until the story was finished.

What I’m talking about is a daily word count goal.

See, the problem I always had in the past when trying to write every day was that I was trying to do what I did during NaNoWriMo every single day for the rest of the year. That wasn’t feasible. At least, not for me. 1,667 words a day may not seem like much when considering an 80,000 word novel, but that represents about an hour and a half, maybe two hours worth of writing. And, for me, that amount of time was difficult to pull off.

So, I would get that done for a day or two, get tired, have a day where the best I could squeeze out was 500 words, and then get frustrated that I couldn’t keep up with my goal and quite writing for about a week.

And that, my friends, is why I kept failing.

Then, I discovered this wonderful little hashtag on Twitter. It was #WIP500. And I discovered that it was an online movement, similar to NaNo, where writers would vow to write 500 words a day. 500. That’s it. That’s about a half hour of work for me, maybe forty five minutes if I’m dorking around on Twitter.

I thought, hell, I can do 500 words a day. In fact, this blog post is already just over 500 words. (for the record, I never counted blog posts as part of my daily word count, only what went into a WIP). 500 is no sweat. And the best part about it is, it’s a minimum. If I write 600, 700, or even 1,000, that’s all just bonus.

So, that’s what I started doing. 500 words a day. And I did that for around three months. Now, my novel is finished, and I’ve started writing two short stories for an anthology I’m working on with some friends. All at 500 words a day.

And it’s working out great.

I get to write every single day, which makes me feel better. I don’t have to stress about not getting time with my family on the weekend, or even during the week when they  want to watch a new movie on the TV. I have time to play a video game if I get my writing done early, and I even get some sleep at night because I’m not forcing myself to stay up late to get 1500 words written. I’m way less stressed, and in fact feel pretty good about myself when I do get some writing in.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve started putting a ‘X’ on my calendar at work for each day I write. And it looks and feels pretty damn good when I get a whole month marked.

So, the lesson I learned about writing every day is that you need to set a realistic word count goal for your self. It doesn’t matter how small or how big that is, as long as it’s something that you think you can commit to every day. 200? Fantastic! 2,000 words? You go! It doesn’t matter, because after you do it for long enough, eventually you’ll get to those sweet, sweet words: ‘The End.’

For me, the sweet spot was 500, and I owe that to a fantastic little hashtag.

That’s all I got for now. I’ll be back later with some other lessons I’ve learned from writing every single day, including that sometimes, it’s okay to NOT write. Until then, keep on writing!

Flash Fiction Friday: A Horse with No Name

Welcome back once again to Flash Fiction Friday!

This week's entry comes from the prompt for R. B. Wood's podcast, The Word Count. Go check it out, if you haven't yet. Richard is a good guy, a good author, and has a fantastic podcast featuring all kinds of other good authors.

Anyway, this prompt was "take a line from your favorite song and write a story around it."

It's not my all time favorite song, but I do like it, and this story almost wrote it self once I said the line out loud. Keep in mind that this is the first draft of this story, and it's going to get edited before I record it and submit it to the podcast.

In the mean time, please enjoy!

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A Horse with No Name

“I rode through the desert on a horse with no name,” the stranger said in response to Ahmed’s question.

“Bah!” Ahmed said, his lip curled in a snarl. “No one rides through that desert, not and lives. There is a reason we call it the Land of Death.”

The stranger’s eyes, strangely blank and focused at the same time, turned their attention on Ahmed, burning into his skull, as if the man were looking at Ahmed’s very soul. Ahmed took an involuntary step backward.

“But I did,” he said. “And I found it there. The legends are true.”

“Legends?” Ahmed said, his eyebrows raised in confusion. Then, the man’s words sank in, and his eyebrows lowered, his eyes squinting in understanding. “You don’t mean…?”

“I do,” the stranger said, and then reached into his robes to pull out a long, straight bundle of blankets, as long as a man is tall, and thin, like a pole. Or a spear, Ahmed realized.

“That is it?” Ahmed said. “Are you sure?”

The stranger pulled back the blankets enough for Ahmed to see the spear point. Pure platinum, he could tell even just by looking at it, with a single ruby at the point where the blade met the shaft. And runes, ancient runes of a long dead language, were carved into the metal. He gasped, turned to make sure no one else was looking, then quickly wrapped it back up!

“It is…” he said in a whisper. “It’s he Spear of Time, the one prophesied to be used by the Great Defender in the final battle that will either save or destroy the world."

“Indeed,” the stranger said. “I found it… out there.”

His eyes went glassy. Well, more glassy than before, like instead of looking through Ahmed, he wasn’t even aware that Ahmed was there. The stranger was clearly looking at the past, his recent past.

“I… I can’t remember much,” he said. “The heat. I can’t even remember my own name.”

“The desert does that to people,” Ahmed said. “Go on and tell me what you do remember.”

“I…” The stranger paused. Then, he sat down suddenly, on the dusty ground by the building that held Ahmed’s shop. He leaned his head back against the wall, and for the first time, Ahmed say just how tired the other man looked. The bags under the man’s eyes were swollen and purple, and the hair on his chin was clearly at few days worth of growth. And where before he saw a smelly mess, he now saw a man who had torn clothing and a dirty countenance that came from hardship. Ahmed frowned. Sympathy was not an emotion he was used to, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

Suddenly, the stranger’s head snapped back up.

“A city,” he said. “I remember a city… made of… jewels?”

“Ala-mashad,” Ahmed said automatically, thinking of the old stories and prophecies about the so-called City of God, said to be hidden deep in the desert. He stopped before he said anything else. Ala-mashad? The Spear of Time? Legends. These things were not real. This stranger was just… what? A crazy man? A wily merchant, trying to pass off items as legendary artifacts? No. Ahmed didn’t believe that. There was more to this stranger than either of those options. He just wasn’t yet ready to believe that this man before him was the Great Guardian spoken of in the sacred texts.

“I remember… a man… another man… I…” The stranger continued. “I followed him… into the desert… he had committed a crime, I think… I can’t remember his name, either. I followed him, to that strange city where… something happened. Something rose up… a giant snake? and… ate us?”

Ahmed almost opened his mouth again. Dal-Hashad, the world snake, that was said to devour the light and the dark at the beginning of time, and would spit out the Great Guardian and the Dark Agent before at the end of time, when the Final Battle would happen. This man had to be pulling his leg.

“I don’t think…” the stranger said, still looking into that strange past he saw. “I don’t think I’m the same man as the one that went into the desert, the one that was chasing after a criminal. But at the same time, I am he. I have his… memories. Or some of them, at least. And the man I was chasing, he is different, too. After the snake spit us out, we landed on a pile of treasure.”

Ahmed noted that the man’s words were coming faster now. He was obviously remembering more.

“I remember looking at him, this other man, this dark man, and wanting to kill him, as if that were my purpose in life. I reached out to the treasure around me, and grabbed that spear. I struck at him with it, but he too had reached into the pile, and grabbed a shield. A black shield, that appeared to be made from darkness itself. He laughed, then touched the shield and vanished. I left the city, found this house, and rode… here.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, leaning back against the building. He looked tired once more. A bone deep wariness, as if he had been walking for a hundred years. Which he could have, from the look of him, Ahmed thought.

“I also found…” the stranger said, fishing around inside his shirt. “This. It was around my neck when I awoke on that pile of treasure.”

He pulled out a small, round pendant and showed it to Ahmed. Ahmed gasped, and took a step backward again. He had to stop himself from taking more. It was impossible. But there it was, the symbol, the chain, everything. Proof that this man was telling the truth. For the pendant was made out of a green materal known as Jade, something that didn’t exist anywhere but in legends. But it had to be Jade? What else was that green color? Touching it, it was no stone that Ahmed had ever seen. Jade. Te Rock of God, they called it. This man before him really WAS the Great Guardian. He had to tell someone.

“I…” Ahmed started, looking from the pendant to the stranger. “I need to… tell someone. The priest, maybe. He’ll know what to do. You, you stay here, inside my shop. You’ll be safe.”

The stranger nodded, and stood up to go inside.

“Take my horse,” he said to Ahmed, who nodded. Without thinking, he got on the horse and rode, fast, toward the temple in the middle of town. The priest, he had to know what to do next. He looked down at the horse. The Horse with No Name, the stranger had called it. When that thought went through his head, Ahmed almost fell off.

The Horse was part of the prophecy too. The horse with no name would bring the Guradian out of the Land of the Dead, and it would also carry the Guardian’s herald, who would bring news of the guardian. It was said in the prophecy that the horse would carry the herald to a great leader, where he would share his news. It was also said that the horse would carry the herald in the final battle, where he would die, sacrificing himself to protect the Guardian.

It occurred to Ahmed that he was that herald. He was right now heading to a great leader, the high priest of the temple, to bring news of the guardian. And e was doing it, riding on a horse with no name. It was almost enough to make Ahmed cry.

A bloody horse with no name.

The End