Stoneslayer Draft 2, Beta Reads, and The University Vignettes

By way of update, a little over a week ago I finished the second draft of Stoneslayer. I had hoped to reduce the word count under 120k, but I ended up making it about 450 words longer, ending at 123.5k. I've sent it to a ton of beta readers (~20). We'll see whether they get to the end :) So far their suggestions have been to add more...

The University Vignettes:
I suppose I should make a mention of a longstanding project I've had called The University Vignettes (working title). I wrote a random kernel of a short story back in March 2015, which I rediscovered in August 2016 and finished. That project became "The Future's Price", a commentary on the cost of higher education through a very grim fantasy story. You can listen to a reading I did here.

But it doesn't end there. I got the idea to make a series of commentaries in this fashion, which I've tentatively titled The University Vignettes. There will be five short stories all told. They're all separate stories (well, #'s 1 and 4 are from the same POV), but they reference each other and focus around a particular event at the university, the breaking of the Jewel of Tusco (a giant stained-glass window).

Just the other day I finished the second of these stories, named "To What Degree?" The alpha reader reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, which is encouraging. This is a slow burning project though, so there's no telling when exactly I'll make it to the next vignettes. I do already have the epilogue written. I'd like to say I'll finish before the end of summer, but with the helter-skelter angle I've taken with this I'm much more comfortable saying the end of the year. Once they're all done, I'm going to publish them in a little anthology.

Word Count Creep

Writing a book can be is a daunting task. Depending on your goal, you have anywhere between 50,000 to 400,000 words to type when crossing the threshold of your journey (hopefully you have the decency to constrain your prose to a length not too much higher than that). It's easy at any step in the process to lose momentum and become swamped. I want to talk about some of the writing cairns and how to get past them.

Initial Word Count Goal

I'm a numbers-oriented person. I like to have a goal in mind when embarking on most any endeavor. I think it's important for any writer to have a ballpark on their total word count. Some people may find this irrelevant and take care of it in editing, but I often prefer pre-editing over post-editing. Anything I can do to reduce work on the tail end is beneficial.

The way that I got a ballpark for my first book was precisely by looking up word counts of novels that I had read. Out of interest, here's a list of some popular book word counts. Another thing I took into account was the industry recommendations. Here's a page with a good meter.

Important also is whether you are debuting or returning to the scene. When people pick up a Dan Brown book they think, "I've read/heard of his books. I'll give this one a shot." When people see a Benny Hinrichs novel they think, "Cover's not terrible. I wonder if he's related to Jimmy Hendrix." Two different reactions. Reading a novel takes time (probably at least 10 hours). You have to convince people that your words are worth that time investment, and most people will shy away from a thick, bludgeoning tome from an unknown author.

Of interest: I wanted my first book to be somewhere between 90,000 to 105,000 words long. It turned out to be 101,000. I only achieved that by outlining and estimating.

Progress Spurs Progress

Another driving principle is that progress inspires progress. It takes hundreds of small victories to write 100,000 words. I keep a spreadsheet of my chapter word count. Every time I finish a chapter, I note the date and length along with a running total. Here's the spreadsheet of my word counts for Schools of Thought. The first time you hit 1,000 words, you think, "Wow, that wasn't all that bad. I can do that a few more times." Pretty soon you've laid out 5,000. Then 10, 20, 50, 100. Knowing that you've already accomplished something will drive you to accomplish something else.

You should find a progress monitoring method that jives with you. I do word count by chapters. Another idea is progress by event or scene (like you're shooting a movie). For that you need to have a pretty good outline.

Working Word Count Goal

Another trick of the trade that helps me immensely is a working word quota. That is, in x amount of time I will produce y number of words. My current working word quota is 2500/week. I like to use the week increment rather than day or month because it gives me enough time to do it without giving me too much time to do it.

Parkinson's law states that work will expand to fill time available for its completion. If I saw that I'll do 2500 words in a week, I may do all those on Saturday, but it gets done. If I say I'm going to do 500 words a day, I have a higher possibility of missing that goal due to other obligations. That will lead to writing depression and will encourage me to miss future goals. If I say I'm going to do 12,000 words a month, I'll inevitably go a whole week or two without writing anything. Suddenly I have to write 6,000 words a week  for two weeks straight. It's too onerous. Just as progress incites further progress, failure incites further failure. Thus my 2500/week.

Conclusion

Small victories win large wars. Set realistic goals and meet them! I'd like to add here that outlining will help everything. Maybe I say this because I'm not as much of a discovery writer, but I truly believe it. If I already know what's going to happen in a chapter, it's so much easier to write. Same holds true for a book. If you know where you're going, it'll be easier to get there.