Uncategorized « Robin Writes

So it was finished. Oh, dear. That means it was FINISHED! Now what??

I had actually printed off the first 100 pages or so that Friday, so my husband could start reading it because, as he said, “I’m a slow reader, I need to start NOW!” He wasn’t slow this time! He read Friday night, and Saturday, and finished the whole thing Sunday evening. And he loved it!

Of course, you say, he’s SUPPOSED to love it – for better and for worse and all that, right?

The next step, almost as soon as I wrote “The End,” was to send it off to half a dozen beta readers. And they LIKED IT! Sure, they’re friends, but most of them are also writers and they know the importance of critique. And, when I say they LIKED it, I certainly don’t mean it was all sunshine and roses and hearts and rainbows – nope, they did have some suggestions and some questions.

While my readers were reading, I sent the ms off to my editor/proofreader. She is AWESOME! And yes, I’m a grammar nazi, and yes, I can spell – rather well, actually – but this is why one uses an editor: she found mistakes! Oh, the horror! And some of them were so ridiculous that I wondered WHO had written it! (In fact, there’s at least one – ha – in the finished novel itself.)

I talked to my in-person readers; I looked at all the emails I’d gotten from them. I made a few changes, nothing major, added a few paragraphs, double-checked everything. NOW I was finished!

I spent a good portion of the month of February writing. Nearly every day, in fact, and at the end of the month I had around 30K words. Not too shabby! And then life got in the way.

For those of you who don’t know, we own a bookstore. I really nice one, if I do say so myself, but we just opened last October. I do the marketing, advertising, accounting – although I have a real one on retainer for the tricky stuff, like when I have to do math – and booking events, writing the store blog and bi-weekly newsletter, etc., etc. We do still have a kid at home too, and the spring of 8th grade year is always busy with things like graduation and confirmation and getting the high school paperwork ready. Plus we had company come in, and a houseguest for a month – although it’s my stepmom and she is a GREAT help at the bookstore!

So, I got busy…with all that and a few other things besides. But I still wrote, just not as much or as often. I also have a tendency to go back through the WIP quite often, adding and deleting but mostly correcting. By the end of June, and a bit into July, I’d added another 20K words.

Now, it was crunch time. I was getting tired of procrastinating and I told the fam: okay, this is IT. I’m going to finish this book! And I did. I set the date of July 28 and, at 10:00 p.m. that night, I finished. 30K words in two weeks.

Someone told me that Stephen King once said that if one writes 2K words a day, that’s a good day. On one of those last days I wrote 6K. Took my hands a full day to recover!

So, just a tad over 80K (okay, 83,202) in six months. Not too shabby.

How often do you write? How many words per day, or do you not keep track? Do you write every day? Most days? Whenever the mood strikes (or the muse insists)?