Sail, -t --

I have more pages. You want?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Ooh, nice one, Sail.

Erin, a friend of mine took 7 years to write the last third of his novel. His fans got a wee bit impatient. His affectionate name for it was Tree Killer, since it was so long.

How much time does it take to paint a picture? Sometimes inspiration keeps you up all night, sometimes it's taking a long vacation in napsville. I've given this a great deal of thought, and as hard as I try to churn out 2000 words a night, it just doesn't work that way, for me. I can churn out 6000 in a sitting once a story has my brain in its teeth.

Some writers write on a schedule, and their brains turn on from 2pm to 8pm, some write when the iron is hot. You'll find your own pace and become comfy with it.

Allyson - if I understand your deadline properly you only have to do ~500 words a night (counting from the time you first discovered you were 9,000 short) to make it. Don't know if a tiny fragment every day fits into your style either.