8 10 2011

I'm trying to write a book (or what I expect to be two books) averaging (at most) 150-200,000 words (I'd like to keep it on the 150,000 end of things though.) Lets use 175,000 for convinience. (For comparison, Tolkien's The Return of the King had about 135,000 words, and Deathly Hallows had about 200,000.)

On average, given editing and proofreading time, a writer produces about 1,000 words per hour. This holds pretty true for me. I write about twice that fast, but will spend the same amount of time later whittling it down and rewriting.

I've read a few places that on average 1/5 of the words a writer writes get used. I think I do better, but lets use that number, because I'd rather be pessimistic and have room to do better. (I don't know if this is actually a rate comparison. It may be this number assumes I'm “producing” 5000 words in one hour, then spending the next 4 hours editing.)

So if we need 350,000 words for both, and only 1/5 get used, we'll need 5 times that many. 1,750,000 words. A daunting number. If I write every day of the year, I'd need to write just under 5,000 words per day. If I “average” 1,000 words per hour, that's 5 hours a day.

My current goal is to write for 8+ hours on every day I'm not otherwise working. (Currently, I work 1-3 days a week.)

Assuming I can keep this up, math tells me I can write two books by september 2012.

Information (fair warning, I'm make jokes)

Revision stage one complete.

1. Blog subdomain created.  Google Blogger page is functional.
2. Navigation redesigned from left navigation to center navigation.
3. Page layout shifted to accommodate navigation change.
4. Changed bottom navigation to look better on the new layout.

Ok, that's it.  More will be coming, but I'm not sure when.  Ideally I will make my blog and website seamlessly merge, but this will take a bit of time.  I also might have missed a few pages transferring them to the new layout.  If you find such a thing, please let me know, either by emailing me ryan.mcclanahan@live.com or post on my blog (as linked several times now.)

Quarterly update!  Writing proceeds apace.  I'm going to try using my website as a tool to actually spread my writing.  (Heresy!)  So, new business.

I might bring back a webcomic.  I know I've said this before, but I actually might do it now.  We'll see how much time I have in early 2012.  I've got collaboration and at least 20 ideas for strips, which is a nice place to start.  I haven't had collaboration since 2005 (and the doctor said I would be immune in the future!)  So that's nice.

I'm separating my personal blog and my work/writing/BSing blog (kids, don't tell your parents I said that.)  Later, I expect I will make my "professional" blog into a blogger/blogspot thing as well, but I need to put an hour or two into finding out how to integrate it into my existing website.  I know it can be done, I just don't have time right this minute.

I'm going to try (really hard) to put out a weekly article of some sort (barring comics.)

Made a few minor structural changes.  Added a background image.  Darker than I'd like, but I'll keep it anyway.  I spent about an hour and a half making it line up properly when it loops, but I still see a little weirdness where text spaces grouped together.  Oh well.

Well holy roasted, deep fried, beer battered, giant, petrified, reconstituted, dehydrated, space squirrel on a thirty-three-and-a-half foot mahogany stick.  Go to Stories to hear the more amusing, and dramatic, explanation of "Why/What" I've done.  Essentially, I wrote stories, found a copy of the text, am editing them, and putting the first series up for viewing.  I'm doing this because I can.  I may later take them down if someone shows interest in publishing them.  (This seems unlikely, but modern physics seems to say lots of things are unlikely, so that won't stop me.)

I'm also going to make more, but these may or may not appear on the website in their fullness.