1,000 Words a Day: January Breakdown

After starting this 1,000 Words* a Day experiment, I thought I’d see how many words I’ve written since December 31st (I started a day early so I wouldn’t forget) – then break them down between the various stories I’ve worked on, to see where I’ve made the most progress.

TOTAL: 46,163 (?!?!? Was not expecting that number!)

NIHILISM: 11,689
EDGE: 4,450
SHADOW’S VOICE: 4,830
THE THIRTEENTH HOUR: 140
WAKING MAGIC: 2,545
SWITCH: 1,694
ICARUS BURNING: 7,141
GESTALT: 8,212
GEAS: 4,097

Summing up the stories doesn’t reflect the total, because there have been times when I counted words for a day only to erase them the next day and start over from scratch – and some of these are only the amount I wrote on the story in the past month, not the length of the stories overall.

Still…it’s pretty telling, don’t you think? It’s sure as hell indicative of what I need to fix in my writing workflow.

I have enough words written for half a novel, but I don’t have half a novel. I have fragments of several novels.

Which is what I expected out of the first month – and while it’s good to know I can write half a novel in a month (without the reckless lack of premeditation that characterizes NaNoWriMo), this demonstrates more than anything a need for consistency. But that’s why I’m doing this. This an exercise in building discipline, making a habit out of writing every day as a professional should; I may be a pantser, but even pantsers have to have discipline and dedication. That discipline comes in stages: first conditioning to write every day, then conditioning to write decently every day instead of page-vomiting to get to the word count, then conditioning to stay with one story and see it through rather than just waiting for one to strike inspiration and hold my attention long enough to finish. I’d say I’m fairly well along on the first two, and getting close to the third. I’ve told myself I’m going to finish NIHILISM, and that’s that.

So let’s see if I can get a good 30,000 words on NIHILISM in February, ne?

Tangent: Last night I finally saw Avatar. In 3D. Yes, I know I’m late. And while I enjoyed it a hell of a lot, I remembered why I don’t do 3D movies: my eyes hate me for a full 24 hours after. Last night I spent wandering around with my eyes terribly strained, struggling to restore depth perception in a truly three-dimensional world after two and a half hours spent viewing recorded images projected in multiple layered depths of field. I bumped into a lot of things. And this morning my eyes are just sleepy and sore, with a little difficulty focusing on things beyond a certain distance. I came away better than Hikaru, though. By the time we were even halfway through the film, he had a migraine so bad he could barely enjoy the movie.

As for the movie itself: it’s pretty much what I’d heard. Beautifully rendered visuals (slight disconnect between real and CGI, more obvious than people say it is), plot a mashup of about five or six other already-good movies, with your classic “white savior learns the old ways**/plight of the natives” storyline with some heavy-handed Earth Mother / environmentalist / corporate fatcat stuff thrown in.

It was still a damned fun film, with engaging characters and heartfelt emotion. And some damned awesome action. Just because I recognize it for what it is doesn’t mean I didn’t love the hell out of it. (And enjoyed that we ended up rooting for the aliens, not the humans, just like in District 9.) I’d like to see it again, actually.

…just…not in 3D.

Final note: I’m not saying much about the Amazon / MacMillan debacle. Others have already said it far better; just hit Google and you’ll see. But I will say that I was one paycheck away from buying a Kindle, and now I’ve started shopping for a Sony Reader because of this. And I’m not the only one. One consumer’s voice often makes no difference. But anger enough consumers, especially when those consumers are both writers and avid readers…and you’ve basically screwed yourself.

 

 

*I can’t type that without thinking of the “1,000 Words” song from FFX-2, and now it’s stuck in my bloody head.

**That’s the one thing I try not to think too hard about, as it would ruin my enjoyment of the movie since it’s a pet peeve. It wouldn’t make me as touchy as films like Last of the Mohicans and The Last Samurai, but that could be because oh, hey, I’m not part blue cat-person. But still. From the perspective of a non-white person, those movies can be a little insulting. And I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and saying LALALALA because dammit I LIKED Avatar and I want to keep liking it.

AmazonFail update.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp

Thought so. That’s much more sensible than all the pitchfork-waving that was going on before.

Amazon Fails.

This started on Twitter, but is beginning to explode all over the internet: Amazon has stirred controversy and roused protests from its customer base and many high-profile authors (and other names in the publishing industry) by removing the sales rankings from content deemed as “adult,” causing it to no longer show up in certain searches or on certain best-seller lists.

As if the regression back to antiquated standards of censorship wasn’t bad enough: apparently the decision as to what constitutes “adult” materials is highly discriminatory against LGBT publications. While Playboy and other materials with heterosexual adult content retain their sales rankings and remain easily available on all searches and best-seller lists, many LGBT publications with only nominal romantic or erotic content have been de-listed with little to no feasible explanation for the change except for a canned response about the new policy. At the same time, books discussing preventions, cures, or other discrimination against homosexuality retain their sales rankings and now have a more prominent position in searches for “homosexuality” with other, more relevant publications now removed from search results.

Outrage has come fast and furious, and the #amazonfail hash tag is currently the most popular one on Twitter. I’ve been following the conversations, and the outpouring of shock and anger has been growing at understandably exponential levels.

For decades many groups have fought for freedom of speech, freedom against discrimination, and freedom against censorship. Such a simple act, while seemingly innocuous, is an enormous step backwards and displays a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of equality. If the LGBT community – our stories, our authors, our world – were truly seen as equal by those at Amazon who made this decision, then this policy never would have been enacted at all.

I can only hope that this was a short-sighted mistake, and that Amazon didn’t think this or its ramifications through. I can’t imagine a corporation of this size being so willfully blind, and willfully discriminatory. An Amazon spokesperson apparently claims that it was a glitch – but another author has proof that it’s been happening since February. That’s quite a long time to go without fixing a glitch.

Whatever it is, I hope that it’s corrected soon, and that Amazon doesn’t abuse its position as a leading mainstream book retailer to force censorship on a public that never asked for it. I’d like to hold out hope, for now, rather than joining in the rabble-rousing and automatically assuming malicious intent. It’s just too senseless and irrational; there has to be a better explanation than what most are assuming. Amazon didn’t achieve its premiere ranking by being stupid.