Tree cutting on the island.

Well, I said i was going to talk about word targets, so here I am. I have Checked the shopping list for Saturday, read emails (there were just two), checked WP (again, just a couple of comments, not needing much work) and turned to blogging. It is now 7.53 and I got out of bed at 7.31. That’s 22 minutes.

I didn’t experience an avalanche of regrets from people who preferred word counts to woodpeckers, so I’m going to take it that nobody is too concerned about the subject, except me and maybe a few passing writers.

Hemingway did 500 a day, Stephen King does 2,000 and a lot of people are somewhere in between. A thousand words a day seems to suit many people. I have written several book length accumulations of words and know that I can certainly do 1,000 to 2,000 a day. For an average sort of novel that means You should be able to do it in three months. At that rate, I can also polish a lot of it as I go along. What I can’t do is all the other stuff that goes into it. I end up, like Dr Frankenstein, with a pile of spare parts stitched together with good intentions (I think that’s part of a quote from Augusten Burroughs –  I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. My words do not live, and they certainly don’t build into a book. That’s why I turned to blogging (which is just rambling) and poetry, where you can get away with a handful or words, some mystery and a decent editor. Indecent editors, in case you are wondering, are the ones who don’t recognise my talent.

Mandarin drake at Arnot Hill Park, Nottinghamshire

Even with a diversion to check numbers and the quote I have just done 224 words in 14 minutes. Words aren’t the problem. Even good words aren’t the problem. The problem is that I’ve just gone back to add a bit and that’s another 6 minutes gone.

I’m now suspending writing at 8.12 to make breakfast for Julia as she is going out this morning and I try to be attentive.

But first, I will kill another minute or two reading back what I just wrote. That’s what writers do.

I bet Stephen King doesn’t have to stop and make breakfast for his wife. He probably has a housekeeper. I’ve read his book about writing but I don’t think he covers domestic staff.

8.14, I’m definitely going . . .

9.12 and I’m back. We had a moderate breakfast as Julia won’t be home until early afternoon, chatted and watched birds on the feeders. Nothing happened that needs noting down and it’s time to get back to work.

Nuthatch at Rufford Abbey

I was going well, but the pause has stopped me in my tracks. I re-read what I wrote earlier and am now staring at the screen. A lesser man would have writer’s block, I just can’t think of anything to say right now.

I’m examining word count from the point of view of a man trying to do many things. Tomorrow, for instance, I will be baking, amongst other things. I once read something that said it takes about fifteen minutes to change tasks and get back into the next one. That’s why multi-tasking, despite its almost mythic status, doesn’t really work. I researched that while I was working in the office at Quercus, as we used to call the corner with the desk in it.

That’s one of my problems with productivity, I’m trying to do too many things at a time and each one swallows up a small portion of time as you swap between them. It might be more like 5 minutes than the 15 minutes the research suggests, but do it a dozen times a day and that’s an hour gone for no result.

There’s also the time spent on research. Sometimes I can rip through something fairly quickly if I’m carrying the facts in my head (though they still need checking). Other times it takes a long time to gather all the facts and get them into order. It’s an imprecise calculation because sometimes I know what I need, or know where to look. Other times I just have to search, and search . . .

Gadwall

An example of that is a group of medals I’ve just been researching. Just before calling it finished, I checked the article and decided to run a quick newspaper search on his sons.  One went farming in Kenya after WW2 (having served in the Army since before the Great War). His grave showed him as a Lt Colonel, but I had a gap between him retiring in the late 1930s and reappearing on a gravestone in 1955. Reports of his death, which were printed in several newspapers, indicated that he had been in the Home Guard in WW2, before going to Kenya to farm. He had been gored by a rhinoceros which charged him as he was walking with his wife near their farm house. He pushed her behind a thorn bush for safety and tried to fight off the rhino with his walking stick. It has little to recommend it in some ways, as I was really researching the father, but it’s an interesting story to round things off. However, it probably took me half an hour to find the three reports and patch them together. It’s taken me a while here, as I’ve amended the last paragraph a couple of times to make it flow.

9.39 now. By the time I finish, I will have done a thousand words, just like a proper writer. It’s easier, of course, when you can just ramble rather than having to worry about plots and pacing and possibly, with my thoughts on detective fiction, probably poisons. Prussic acid, strychnine or perhaps the poisonous mushroom tha is only lethal when taken with alcohol. Sorry, I just wandered off to have a look at poisonous mushrooms. The facts don’t seem quite as cut and dried as stories I have read about it. It would be great if you wanted to make someone very ill, less good if you wanted to kill them. And it took me eight minutes to read.

Lomg Tailed Tit at Rufford Abbey

9.49 and I have passed 1,000 words. So, my point for today is that words are simple, even in quantity, but organisation and research, and domestic tasks, are making me less efficient. I will think about this, as I think their are large efficiencies to be had from organising, making lists and doing the research before the writing rather than alongside. If anyone has hints of efficiency please let me know.

1087 Words. 9.52. Allowing an hour for breakfast that’s a thousand words an hour. A touch over that if you add the final reading I just did.

Now, in my disorganised way, I will waste some time wondering what to do next . . .

They say, in case you are interested, that Edgar Wallace could write a 70,000 word novel in 3 days, using wax cylinder recordings and secretaries. That’s quick.

Heron at Arnot Hill Park