I’m mildly obsessed with metrics – both at work but especially at home. I suspect it’s my engineering background triggering a bit of OCD. I track my running in three different apps, my food, my weight, body fat and water and of course my writing. I have a couple of spreadsheets for writing – my submissions spreadsheet and my writing log which tracks how much writing I do each day of each type writing – Outlining, New, Revising, Rewriting. Yesterday, I added a weekly summary page with a graph. The graph for last week looks like this: That’s a total of 5,798 words for the week which is actually my third most productive week. Monday was purely a revision day so the wordcount is very small. I’m still working on my methodology for revisions because those invariably end up as a net negative day. That would throw off the metrics so I ignore revision for the overall total words and my OCD demons would like me to find a better way of dealing with that. The two blocks of outlining were a science fiction serial (Wednesday), a monster story (Friday) and In the Shadow of Memories (Sunday). Most of the … Read More
Inbetween Days
So, with first draft of The Ghost Smuggler written and filed away for a few weeks before I start revising it, what’s next? Well, first up, I don’t want to stop writing. Partly because I’ve got a nice writing streak going (49 days so far) but more importantly because I’m enjoying the writing so much at the moment. The good news is, Ethel the Muse has been busy and I have a whole raft of ideas. First up, there’s three potential Ghost Smuggler related projects: The sequel novel A prequel novella called The Ghostwalker Edicts A parallel novella that tells the story of one of the secondary characters from the novel Then there’s a some other novels: A YA urban fantasy filled with freaks and the monsters who hunt them A YA urban fantasy about a girl who can create magical worlds A science fiction serial that started off as a throwaway idea but has grown into something a lot more substantial And some short stories: A psychological horror story called The Bone Boy A science fiction story about the skull of a military robot A horror-ish story about an ice creature and the girl she befriends Two novellas based in the world … Read More