My mid-week report to you that covers the three major commitments I’ve made: to write, to edit, and to read.
Writing
N’Inktober. Is. Done.
Not going to lie, this has been a really intense month. Writing every day? Yeah, I' can do that. Coming up with a story idea every day, in a half hour or an hour, and then banging it out? Whoof. That has been a real challenge. Unbelievably fun, mind you - but still a challenge! I look forward to not doing it this evening :)
For those of you interested, here’s all the N’Inktober stories in order:
N’inktober #1 - Scarcity Ammonite
N’inktober #2 - Callipygous Waltz
N’inktober #3 - Libram Seadragon
N’inktober #4 - Moose Beret
N’inktober #5 - Kerfluffle Scythe
N’inktober #6 - Zephyr Shrimp
N’inktober #7 - Freeze Prison
N’inktober #8 - Diamond Found
N’inktober #9 - Reunion Seapen
N’inktober #10 - Moist Celosia
N’inktober #11 - Artichoke Lubber
N’inktober #12 - Stygian Squirrel
N’inktober #13 - Angelic Catfish
N’inktober #14 - Chaotic Growth
N’inktober #15 - Coffee Failure
N’inktober #16 - Verklempt Crawfish
N’inktober #17 - Psychopomp Angular
N’Inktober #18 - Sussurration Forget
N’Inktober #19 - Childhood Elephant Bird
N’Inktober #20 - Candor Guarded
N’Inktober #21 - Trust Dragonfly Swarm
N’Inktober #22 - Wolf Bougainvillea
N’Inktober #23 - Hidden Demiurge
N’Inktober #24 - Toast Partners
N’Inktober #25 - Shell Poisonus
N’Inktober #26 - Wolf-Man Abandoned
N’Inktober #27 - Glass Thixotropic
N’Inktober #28 - Man-Wolf Catttail
N’Inktober #29 - Sideways Windswept
N’Inktober #30 - Nocturnal Schizophrenia
N’Inktober #31 - Azimuth Lost
Looking at the month in numbers:
Words written: 37,427
Words published: 36,907 (one of the illustrations inspired two stories)
Time taken: 66 hours
Writing pace: 559 words/hour
Shortest: 268 words
Longest: 2133 words
Complete stories: 24
Partial stories: 7 (story beginnings that I want to complete)
The writing pace number is interesting. It seems low, but here - let me show you what the journey to a story looked like…
First, I’d start by looking up the words for the prompt and reading the definition, at a minimum. If there was something more detailed I could find on Wikipedia or elsewhere, I dover into that as well. All of that was to prime the pump for the next step.
Next, Cedar’s illustration would arrive! I’d show it to my wife, and a lot of times, she’d help me brainstorm. Some nights that went quicker, other nights slower. Once or twice, and idea came almost immediately. Most nights it was at least 20-30 minutes of noodling about before something started to gel.
This was the point where I would get the rough idea for plot, characters, and genre. That last was more important than you would think. There were times when I intentionally thought, “You know, I want to do a noir story here.” Or a Lovecraftian horror pastiche, or a slice-of-life story. Although sometimes I started writing one way and the words came out differently than I expected…
When I had the kernel of an idea, I’d start writing, because I was under an unstated but self-imposed time constraint: I wanted to get things done and posted before the end of the day. That didn’t always happen, but it was my goal. That also meant that I was still thinking about the story when I started writing it! So while I started each story with an idea of the setting, characters, and how I wanted it to go, each one was (essentially) a bit of discovery writing. Which meant that unexpected characters, plot elements, and other interesting flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shores, which meant time to figure out names, personality, what exactly that doohickey had to do with the story, etc. For a lot of the stories, I ended up with a dozen browser tabs open as I looked up one thing or another to make sure the details fit in the story.
Next: editing! I’d go back and do a once-over on the story, then hand it over to Shari. She would read, fix typos, and give me ABCs as feedback (awesome, boring, confusing). Then I’d go back and do a quick editing pass to correct what she found. These stories absolutely would not have turned out as well as they did without my having access to an (literally!) in-house editor!
Then I’d create the post, push it out to social media, and play silly phone games to unwind until I could fall asleep. It made for interesting nights, let me tell you :)
Lessons learned? I can accomplish a heck of a lot by writing every day. I can count on 500 words of polished prose per hour of effort (though I expect that I could do better than that if I were writing consistently in a single setting, i.e., novelling).
I’ve learned a LOT about what it means to write concisely and produce a “story in a scene”. This is probably my biggest takeway. I tend to be a bit wordy, and learning how to write under a time constraint meant that I could only produce so many words… which meant that I needed to make those words count. Whether I’m writing short or long form, that experience is going to help me.
Final question: will I ever do this again? :) Maybe. It was a fun challenge, but it did take up a month of evenings. We’ll see.
Reading
I plan to tear through Space Cowboys 3 and All Will Burn tonight, because hey - I don’t have to write! Time to fill the tank. I’m hoping to do more reading overall this month.
I did do some critiques this month for friends outside my author’s group. I’ve got a couple of stories from the Alpha Mercs to get to as well.
Speaking of which - those guys have been tearing it up. Stories from the Mercs are popping up all over the place. If we have a “home” at this point, though, it’s definitely Raconteur Press – and let me tell you, it’s a happy home. Raconteur is holding down something like 10% of the top 100 new releases in SF/Fantasy on Amazon these days, which is no small feat. I think at this point that just about every one of their books has featured at least one story from an Alpha Merc, and we’ve had anthologies featuring more than a couple of AM stories, as well. Good stuff :)
Other
Still planning on editing/reading in November, especially with the mission trip. Other than that, this week has been relatively quiet, thankfully. Day job is spinning along nicely, da goils are all doing well, and the house quadrupeds are all healthy. Can’t ask for much more than that!
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