Novella Diary, Claw, Day Seven

Really? A week in already? It doesn’t feel like I’ve been at this for a week. Two chapters down. Chapter three about two-thirds done now. By rough word count I’m about a quarter of the way through the book at the point I’m writing this (after session 7.1 below); but narrative points, I’m a little behind. Experience says this means the novella will be longer than 30,000 words in this draft and I’m going to spend some quality time with the flensing knife afterwards.

I more or less decided to track the process of writing this novella after reading Dean Wesley Smith’s recent blog posts about writing a novel in ten days. I’m a pretty frequent reader of Smith’s blog – I don’t always agree with him, but I’m always interested in what he has to say. Plus I’m interested in gathering data about writing that’s immediately useful, and I really had no clue how I went about writing something or what my work flow really looked like.

Session 7.1 (7:56 AM – 8:48 AM)
Word Count: 858

Day-Job day, which means I’m back at Odin the Desktop early in order to get some writing done beforehand. I am the very model of efficiency when I have to be; it’s when I’m got a wealth of free time that things go downhill.

Today’s scene is very, very bare bones. It largely exists to signal intent and general tone, ’cause all the details will change once I finish this draft and have a chance to go do some research. Autopsy scenes are like that. I have some quality time on the internet coming up, locking down the kind of details I actually need. I’m really hoping it involves the word “striations” though. It’s a cool kind of word.

Session 7.2 (6:33 PM – 6:45 PM)
Word Count: 226 words

I got out of work late today. I got home even later. Tuesday night is Trashy Movie night around these parts, which isn’t ordinarily conducive to writing. I normally get home from work, cook some dinner, crash out of the couch with Silas the Laptop and live-tweet the hell out of a particularly trashy movie. We’ve been doing this for over a year now, Tuesday after Tuesday. It’s become an ingrained habit.

Earlier today I read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s post about writing habits. It got into my head a bit.

I mean, I had twelve minutes. And I’m starting to figure out how just how much I can get done in that window.

Session 7.3 (10:05 PM – 10:23 PM)
Word Count: 578

Chapter Three drafted. I sleep now.

Total Daily Writing Time: 1 hours, 22 minutes
Daily Word Count Total: 1, 662

Total Manuscript Writing Time: 9 hours, 35 minutes
Total Manuscript Word Count: 8,256