Friday 27 September 2013

September 27th – 814,037

I have to find more euphemisms for the amount I’m writing, having hit 4,898 words today and I can’t fully explain why my average word count has jumped by over a 1,000 words every day this week, but it has.

It’s something I should pick up and bottle and then sell – how many authors wouldn’t pay a few pence, a few pounds even, for a magic potion to enable them to increase their word count like that? But, I’m no snake-oil salesman, I don’t have a magic potion, or pill, or anything else. What words for me, doesn’t necessarily work for anyone else. The purpose of this challenge, from a public perspective, is to show that it is possible to generate a large word count in a relatively short period of time, and that, by example, if I can do it, so can anyone else.

So what’s holding you back from doing it?

The first thing people often say to me is about quality – am I sacrificing quality for quantity? My simple answer is no, I’m not. Not as far as I can tell. Yes the first draft is a bit loose, and needs a good tightening up at the first edit. Yes there are some plot holes that need extra scenes writing, or at least some serious modification at the edit stage, but that was true last year, when my word count for the entire year was 25% of what I’ve done so far this year.

Everything you write needs a good edit. Period. Usually more than one, and then followed by another by someone else too, so as far as I’m concerned, I’m outputting more, but not dropping the quality to do so. What’s not to like about that proposition.

Now where’s that phone number for the bottling plant?

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