I don't want to get too far ahead of the chapters that I have already discussed, so I will only say that I am now about 25700 words into the book (6000 of those coming out in the last couple of days) which translates to roughly 102 novel pages without page breaks. This sets my mind at ease and makes me feel like I am getting a lot done. I also started writing an Afterword for the book, which explains a few things as well as reiterates my respect for the culture and history used in the book.
If you are trying to calculate how many pages your own novel may have when it's printed, take your word count divided by 250. 250 is the average number of words on a novel page. This is just a guesstimate for you, of course, but it gives you some sort of an idea where you stand on the hill of your novel. I like thinking that I could be a little over a quarter of the way done, and luckily for me, I have a lot more to write about. I'd hate to be this far along and have nothing left to say.
Just after Christmas I sat down and I wrote some goals for myself, and this will come as a shock to no one, but the novel came up. While I have dedicated my time to try and write in my blogs four days out of the week, I have set a firm rule that I must write for the book four days out of the week, no "trying" about it. The way I see it, if I write at least 1000 words per day, that works out to about four pages of text. My commitment to writing four days out of the week will put me at roughly 16 pages of text a week. Let's assume that I want it to be 350 pages long or more... that would mean that I could have this novel finished in 15 and a half weeks. That's less than four months! That's not counting the days where I put out well over my one thousand word goal, like I did in the last two days. I set the date to be finished with this book as December 1st of 2011. If I stick to the plan I have I will finish before my set deadline and be able to get to the other aspects of publishing this, my first novel.
Okay, I realize I just went through a bunch of numbers, and probably lost a few of you along the way, but for some reason these numbers are comforting. It really puts a day to day goal on myself as well as a summit to this novel writing mountain before me. I wish I had a little machine like what they have on the Price is Right, where the little yodeling man is climbing the mountain... A visual reference that I could look at to inspire myself. I may just have to make one. Or one of those thermometer signs you see where it gives a donation amount and where you stand as far as the amount goes. I bet there's a widget for that, I would just have to find it.
 |
| Climb that mountain, little yodeling man! |
Where was I? Ah yes, goals. You have to have them. You have to set a number daily, weekly, or monthly that you can attain. When I sat down to look at the numbers I figured up for myself, it was more of a bite I could chew. Do you have goals set for yourself? What are they? How are you working to attain them?
I will leave it there for now, readers and writers. I hope that your own journey up the mountain is going smoothly.
Goals are good, both to ensure you keep at it and to keep you from going overboard to make up for lost time when you were not at it. Meaning, don't burn yourself out.
ReplyDelete