Harvey Kurtzman's HEY LOOK! (1946-49)
2 hours ago
Saturday, August 15, 2020
Pages
I seem to be on a decent little run on this book. Thursday we had some other stuff going on, so I only made it to the computer for a couple of hours, but I got 7 pages done in that time. Yesterday I was able to stick with it most of the day and wrote 21 pages, my best day in several weeks. Today was a bit of a slowdown, only 10 pages. But 12,000 words in, I like the way the book is shaping up so far.
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4 comments:
Sounds like the drought might be over!
James, you are a marvel. Seriously.
Encouraged by the sale of a story to ‘Tales from the Magician’s Skull’ (probably the best work I’ve moved since ‘The Bonestealer’s Mirror’ appeared in Black Gate #11 back in 2010) I’m working on another short story.
I spent three months dreaming up story elements and arranging them into a rough format, then a couple weeks building a dense outline to tie everything together as smoothly as I could.
Today I finally sat down to turn it into prose.
When I was done I had 926 words. About three pages. And they still need work.
I figure it’ll end up around 8000 words, so the good Lord knows when I’ll have the whole thing written and polished up enough to submit.
Keep swinging, James. It’s oddly comforting to know somebody out there can get it done the way you do.
John Hocking
John,
I think most writers have a pace that's best suited to them, and that pace can be altered but only by so much and only for a certain amount of time before they risk burn-out. For two decades I perked along doing 500K to 750K words per year and never considered even trying to write a million words a year. When that opportunity came along, though, after spending a lot of time scrounging for work and living contract to contract, I felt like I had to try to grab it. Obviously I've been able to push my pace beyond what feels natural for me, but for several years now my goal has been to get far enough ahead to ease back to that earlier output. Hasn't happened so far, but I still have my eye on that target. I'd like to do it intentionally, though, rather than having my productivity erode that far.
Ah, well, I'm verging on navel-gazing now. Best stop that.
As always, impressive. You remain, for many of us, the gold standard.
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