There’s been some discussion on the Think Sideways forum about how writers need to write one million words before they come up with something publishable. I’ve seen the quote attributed on the ‘net to the great man Ray Bradbury, but having re-read Zen & the Art of Writing I think he might have been paraphrased somewhat.
I don’t believe in the million words theory. Firstly, I’ve written at least a million words in academic papers, corporate reports, letters, personal journalling and fiction. I’ll agree that doing so has given me a wide vocabulary and a pretty good understanding of structure (non-fiction especially), spelling and grammar. But I’m still a long way from writing something publishable. I also agree that the more I write fiction, the better my dialogue, description and story structure will get. But a million words? BS. One of my fellow Think Sideways students made the point that the ‘mythical million’ could be significantly reduced by reading books, taking courses and educating yourself in the craft of writing.
I prefer the approach taken by Ally Carter here (note – I picked up this link from Brittany’s excellent Hills and Corkscrews blog). Ally Carter’s way of looking at things is that the first draft is dirty water – ordinary, flat prose that you can polish in subsequent drafts.
So, on to July Writing Goals. Instead of specific writing goals, I’m going to simplify things. Minimum one thousand words a day, my choice. Letters, journalling, novel writing, prompts. I think I’m hitting close to that already, but I’ll be tracking this month and if I hit that average, I’ll increase for next month.
That said, I want to see my novel at fifty thousand words by the end of July. I’m just shy of 35,000 words now, so I didn’t reach my June target of 40k. I was doing a fair bit of novel research and mind mapping – check out Pearl Sideways for details.
