To me, being an author is 20% reading (research), 80% daily word count, and 0% waiting for inspiration.
Musings
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19 responses to “Musings”
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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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Your words count. Trust me, I don’t continue reading stuff I don’t enjoy. So, there!
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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.
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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Kent Wayne 
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