I've got enough writer friends out there that this post is kind of a perfect storm of encouragement and moving forward with doing what we love = writing.I first saw this article by Dean Wesley Smith about Pulp Speed thanks to Jay Barnson and it was one of those posts that kind of makes you go, "Yeah! I need to be doing that!"
I had already meant to make 2017 my year! Producing more and gaining commercial success as well. So far that has been a BIG GO with releasing the novelette Six-Gun Serenade and novel Scavengers which gained a couple different #1 categories and made it to the Top 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 in a dozen categories too! It has done very well its first week out. So pleased with that.
Anyway I was also listening to either the The Sell More Books Show or the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Marketing Podcast, and one of them last week mentioned someone who said they have a daily word goal of only 50 words a day.
What does that have to do with Pulp Speed and my own work ethic? The whole point was only that at 50 words a day - anybody could find the time to do that and accomplish something - no stress. If you can do more great. But don't get overwhelmed, stressed and therefore accomplish nothing - Do Something!
So I decided that I wouldn't slack off any more and gave myself the modest goal of 500 words a day no matter what - if I could do more than that = great = but no stress. I have beat myself up when I haven't accomplished what I felt I should = usually an unreasonable amount of words but that didn't stop me from still getting depressed about it.Since then I have accomplished it, doing at least 500 words a day if not more, yesterday was 3,700.
I did do 40K from about December 20th to January 20th and I fully intend to beat that by a good stretch in the next month. I'll let you know.
So in short, I've got a basic relatively easy goal to meet every day (and hopefully beat) to get myself into at least the bottom rung of what Dean Wesley Smith calls Pulp Speed. Pretty sure I can do it, I've got lots of plans for the new year, novels and novelettes are coming in a literal barrage of pulp fiction goodness.
Until next time!
4 comments:
You can do it!
I've said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating.
To paraphrase Yoda:
Words lead to paragraphs. Paragraphs lead to pages. Pages lead to stories and chapters. Stories and chapters lead to collections and novels.
I may have mentioned this in a comment on this site, but last year I read THE COMPOUND EFFECT by Darren Hardy. It's about how a few small things done every day can have a major impact over time. These things are easy to do, but most people don't do them because they are also easy to not do. Like writing 500 words per day.
Exactly Keith. I figured I can commit to 500 words a day even if I'm at the day job - wherein I can get pretty worn out, and so far I've been doing pretty good. 11k in just about 5 days and I've still got more to do today!
I have done this kind of thing at various points in my career. For me it's been an up and down kind of game. I need to get back to it, though.
Its been working for me so far Charles. Good word counts the last week +.
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