PerExWriMo Post Mortem
Dec. 1st, 2006 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6So, PerExWriMo (Personal Extra Writing Month) is over.
The plan was: Write for 2 hours straight every day I'm not working. (this month, that was 17 days), with minimal distractions - tv off, other windows minimized, no napping.
The results:
The modified plan: I couldn't give up napping, so I quickly decided to only nap if I'd met a quota of 2000 words. Also I was a little flexible with distractions. If I'd done a good deal of writing and wasn't completely stuck but was blocked about exactly what came next I'd do a quick check of other windows to see if anything new was happening.
Word Count: 34184 (approximate, spread over a number of stories and so I might have added wrong, but that's generally correct), giving me an average of 2000 words each writing day.
For the most part I actually wrote more than 2000 words in eah day, rather than writing less some days and more others. The only exception is when I finished my first story, I'd gotten only something like 1000 words that day and felt so accomplished that I gave myself the rest of the day off and caught up on the 1000 later.
What I've achieved:
1 reasonably complete story that needs basic editing. Judging by my own standards of my work, it's good.
1 story that is complete in the sense there are no narrative gaps from beginning to end, but needs heavy editing in order to be anywhere resembling good.
1 story that I did some signfiicant work on but can't be finished as is (unless I think of something spectacular) without a lot of rewriting of what I've already done.
2 100-word drabbles, more for fun than anything else, although I think I did fairly well with them, given the constraints of the form.
Minor progress on a few other short stories and potentially longer form works.
Some significant progress on a novel-type project I'm working on that I've been working on for a while (about 9000 words, which is about 8000 words more than I'd had already done).
A few good ideas that haven't really been developed. A sense of accomplishment. If I'd slightly upped my word quota, or managed to write on more days that I'd worked (some of which would have been easy enough to do), and I'd actually had a novel idea that I could have done like this and stuck with without getting blocked (iffy proposition, but go with me here), I could have actually finished a full NaNoWriMo. Maybe next year I'll give that a try.
Downsides:
Some feeling of drainage. Also, I didn't find the time to update my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alternaljournal as much as I would have liked.
Future prognosis:
Just in terms of writing plan from now on, I do think I'm going to keep up on the 2000 words a day quota... however, at least at present, I can't manage to do that non-stop, and I think trying to force it will make me give up all the quicker. So I'm going to do some kind of compromise.
First, I'm going to take the rest of December off, at least from quotas. I'll still be writing, but I'll be writing when I have an urge (if I have an urge), and of course catching up on myalternaljournal writing. I'll also be working on editing. But I need a good solid week of just vegging, mentally.
After that, in January, I might try to arrange some sort of 'one week on, one week off' schedule. (With the 'week off' also being used for editing). Maybe it'll work out to one month on one off or some other schedule, but we'll see.
As to the stories I've completed? Well, ideally, after editing, I'd like to send them off to SF magazines (well, probably not the drabbles, I don't think those get published unless its a special drabble contest). However, none of the big magazines accept e-mail submissions or anything of the like, and, well, I don't have a printer. So, I'll have to print them elsewhere and mail them off, and, well, I know myself. That ain't happening anytime soon. The mailing is easy enough, but I don't want to go somewhere else to print. But then again, people keep trying to give us printers that they think _might_ work. So far they always don't, but at some point one might actually work. In any event, they need to be edited so it'd be a while before I'd get to the printing stage anyway.
The plan was: Write for 2 hours straight every day I'm not working. (this month, that was 17 days), with minimal distractions - tv off, other windows minimized, no napping.
The results:
The modified plan: I couldn't give up napping, so I quickly decided to only nap if I'd met a quota of 2000 words. Also I was a little flexible with distractions. If I'd done a good deal of writing and wasn't completely stuck but was blocked about exactly what came next I'd do a quick check of other windows to see if anything new was happening.
Word Count: 34184 (approximate, spread over a number of stories and so I might have added wrong, but that's generally correct), giving me an average of 2000 words each writing day.
For the most part I actually wrote more than 2000 words in eah day, rather than writing less some days and more others. The only exception is when I finished my first story, I'd gotten only something like 1000 words that day and felt so accomplished that I gave myself the rest of the day off and caught up on the 1000 later.
What I've achieved:
1 reasonably complete story that needs basic editing. Judging by my own standards of my work, it's good.
1 story that is complete in the sense there are no narrative gaps from beginning to end, but needs heavy editing in order to be anywhere resembling good.
1 story that I did some signfiicant work on but can't be finished as is (unless I think of something spectacular) without a lot of rewriting of what I've already done.
2 100-word drabbles, more for fun than anything else, although I think I did fairly well with them, given the constraints of the form.
Minor progress on a few other short stories and potentially longer form works.
Some significant progress on a novel-type project I'm working on that I've been working on for a while (about 9000 words, which is about 8000 words more than I'd had already done).
A few good ideas that haven't really been developed. A sense of accomplishment. If I'd slightly upped my word quota, or managed to write on more days that I'd worked (some of which would have been easy enough to do), and I'd actually had a novel idea that I could have done like this and stuck with without getting blocked (iffy proposition, but go with me here), I could have actually finished a full NaNoWriMo. Maybe next year I'll give that a try.
Downsides:
Some feeling of drainage. Also, I didn't find the time to update my
alternaljournal as much as I would have liked. Future prognosis:
Just in terms of writing plan from now on, I do think I'm going to keep up on the 2000 words a day quota... however, at least at present, I can't manage to do that non-stop, and I think trying to force it will make me give up all the quicker. So I'm going to do some kind of compromise.
First, I'm going to take the rest of December off, at least from quotas. I'll still be writing, but I'll be writing when I have an urge (if I have an urge), and of course catching up on my
alternaljournal writing. I'll also be working on editing. But I need a good solid week of just vegging, mentally.After that, in January, I might try to arrange some sort of 'one week on, one week off' schedule. (With the 'week off' also being used for editing). Maybe it'll work out to one month on one off or some other schedule, but we'll see.
As to the stories I've completed? Well, ideally, after editing, I'd like to send them off to SF magazines (well, probably not the drabbles, I don't think those get published unless its a special drabble contest). However, none of the big magazines accept e-mail submissions or anything of the like, and, well, I don't have a printer. So, I'll have to print them elsewhere and mail them off, and, well, I know myself. That ain't happening anytime soon. The mailing is easy enough, but I don't want to go somewhere else to print. But then again, people keep trying to give us printers that they think _might_ work. So far they always don't, but at some point one might actually work. In any event, they need to be edited so it'd be a while before I'd get to the printing stage anyway.
