I've heard advice along the lines of Don't Write Anything Until It's Sold for magazine submissions, erika, but I don't know if it's really viable.

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or are they always wanting hypothetical word lengths and etc.

Could you estimate a word length and make yourself stick to it, later?

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I suppose, but it can be hard to pick one that makes sense, sometimes.

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Could you estimate a word length and make yourself stick to it, later?

I suppose, but it can be hard to pick one that makes sense, sometimes.

Is this a magazine that has pieces/features that are usually a certain length? If you're pitching to a certain area of the magazine, can you estimate that way?

In the end, I think you have to give them an estimate, and then figure out how to cut or expand based on what they want.

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Sail, -t --

I have more pages. You want?

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Actually, I have another question.

How do people decide how much to write? More specifically, setting weekly or daily goals? AmyLiz has indicated that most books in the genre I am writing in, paranormal romance or erotica are about 80,000 words or roughly 400 pages. I have 40 pages and I've set myself a goal of 2 pages a day, at least 5 days a week. Which I haven't done in the last week (sick) but I hammered out 4.5 pages in the last two days.

Now, I am proud of myself because my main goal -- my ulimate goal -- is to write a book. Beginning, middle, end, done. And I am hardly the queen of consistency, so right now my focus is on setting up habit.

However, since I am a freakish Virgo, my mind always goes to the better, more part of things.

How do others set up goals for long-term lengthy projects? If I was writing a long research paper, I would have no problem saying "X pages per night; due on this date; revisions two weeks before."

But a novel? I am adrift.

EDIT: And for a taste of part of the reason I am asking this question, upon re-reading I thought, "4.5 pages? In 2 days? That's PATHETIC." Cause I'm used to writing 4.5 pages of research or narrative essays or something similar in like 2 hours. So I'm trying to get a norm, if there be such a beast.

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Yes, I want the more pages!

As to the other, I dunno. 2 pages every day is (figuring conservatively taking weekends off) 40 pages/month, gets you to 400 pages within a year, which seems quite fast enough to be "normal". I think any goal is gonna be necessarily arbitrary until you get a feel for how you work best.

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But a novel? I am adrift.

I don't know. I'm one of those irritating "organic" writers. I figure I'll stop when the story's told. If it's too short for one editor, it probably won't be for another one. If it's too short for all of them, I'll take another look then.

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Erin, send it along! The more porn snark, the better.

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Sky Writing

The breeze off the water cooled my sweaty skin. I’d been at this for a couple of hours. The radio, instead of blaring rock and roll or wailing blues, my usual fare, soared in a crescendo of piano runs composed by Chopin. The sweeping strains of music helped me with my writing. As the music rose to a peak, I pulled in my right arm, relaxed the left, letting the straining lines unwind. With a final flourish, the kite bowed over the crowd, its tails whistling over their ducking heads, putting the final punctuation on my poem in the sky

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