To me, being an author is 20% reading (research), 80% daily word count, and 0% waiting for inspiration.
Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha
Musings and books from a grunty overthinker
To me, being an author is 20% reading (research), 80% daily word count, and 0% waiting for inspiration.
Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha 
If you write for a living, you cannot afford to wait for inspiration. Just do something!
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I still like looking up words … is that research??
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Absolutely Ibiza! 🙂
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I agree. However, I would say 20% reading AND research (combined, not each).
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Gotcha! I guess I was just trying to convey the philosophies of the esteemed Mr. Stephen King and Mr. Steven Pressfield; basically that there has to be some kind of regularity to writing, whether an author is inspired or not.
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I completely agree.
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Daily word count is like reading the contents of a vitamin. Lots of words. A handful of substance. Write even if you have nothing. How much of it is immaterial, as is how much of it you keep. Because where it took you and what you retain of that is what matters to your content. You can write a 2,500 word grocery list. Or you can write 337 that paint a picture. If you’re writing for numbers you’re a creative accountant.
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Well call me a creative accountant, LOL! I’m really just reiterating Mr. Stephen King and Mr. Steven Pressfield’s philosophies, along with a bunch of other authors I’d like to be as prolific as. I personally think creativity is like a muscle in that more that you exercise it, the easier it becomes to use. I’m not condemning others for different viewpoints—there are people like robert Crumb who take ten years to do good work—but I simply try and follow the methodologies of professional and widely enjoyed authors.
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Counting words? That’s a very Trollopey thing to do. And to think he used to get criticized for it.Well, he showed them by being brilliant!
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Exactly! You can always edit mediocrity into greatness (I can describe all of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Matrix with a single, banal sentence: A normal person finds he is extraordinary and saves the world), but there has to be SOMETHING there to edit in the first place!
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Your words count. Trust me, I don’t continue reading stuff I don’t enjoy. So, there!
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Thank You Kris!!! Your kind words mean the world! 🙂 🙂 🙂
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xoxoxoxox Fangirl!!!
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Hahaha! I’m eager to show you pics from Man Child shoot #2 and return the love but I gotta cycle through my remaining photos from #1 (I think there’s like five of them left) LOL!
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Will wait. And enjoy.
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I love words. Fullstop. Counting them, putting them together in a sentence, finding out what a new-to-me word means, laughing at unbelievably creative teenage words and wondering which will make it to the Oxford dictionary.
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Yeah! They’re like magic spells! Seriously, you could argue that they’re objectively just black squiggles, but in the right order they can describe other dimensions and imaginary worlds!
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I love word counting. Like, today, you might have pounded out 10,000 words. And then when you go back for an edit, you might cut that same chunk down to 5,000. But it’s just about writing something. Just let the words flow out and then fix it later.
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Exactly. I’ve had one week where I drafted 5k words and cut like 7k out of my manuscript. The beauty of writing is that we have time to fix it…the downside is that it takes a lot of time to do so lol
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