WRITING TO REACH TWO MILLION WORDS
Posted on December 17, 2016
So I started 2015 with 1,449,115 words under my belt. I'm striving to hit the 2,000,000 mark in the next few years. I worked on three projects this year. How much did I add to the total?
We Kill Humans: 27,886 words
Here Is Where I ...: 80,038 words
The Powers That Flee: 64,417 words
Total for 2016: 172,341 words
New Overall Career Total: 1,621,456 words
Now this will jump up anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 words because I have at least four writing days left in 2016. I will post the revised totals in January.
How did I do?
2015 was a great year, adding 204,473 words to my total. This year, 2016, will likely be just a little over 180,000 words. Not bad for doing this writing thing while maintaining a full-time job as a fifth grade teacher and raising two active teenagers with my wife. I have to consider this a productive year. Heck, anything over 140,000 is a win to me.
Here is what's on my plate for 2017:
Ghost Coast: January-April
Turncoats 3: May-August
Recently Deceased: September-January
i like the model of doing two new projects alongside an older project.
And here are the initial brainstorming summaries from the two new projects coming up:
Ghost Coast
Shorter novel where I explore the common story plot of a dysfunctional boy going off to spend the summer with his aunt at the beach. He is very inward and withdrawn and the reader finds out his mother is about to die, why he is shipped off to live with his aunt. He tries to bury his thoughts of his mother, but the constant intrusions of ghosts to his summer days keeps forcing him to confront it. There are several ghosts, each playing off a ghostly stereotype: the thing in the woods that can inhabit twigs and fallen branches, the lady of the marsh who is frightful and beautiful at the same time, and an attention-seeking poltergeist living under his aunt's trailer. Each helps him confront some aspect of himself and arm him for a final confrontation with the Inside Out Man. This book will be written from a tight outline and be darker and more emotional than my other works.
Death Warmed Over or Recently Deceased
Four dead superheroes are brought back to life to fight against a very evil being. One is a smart Alec type, one a cloaked brooder, another an almost fantasy girl, and one a rather mundane teen with a very hidden talent. This is my audition for comic books, a book I would do if I wanted to catch the attention of a comic book publisher and earn myself a gig writing a corporate hero. Not that I'm writing it for that reason.
Very excited for what's coming up in 2017. Now I have to work really hard to finish up my eighties epic and get that out at the beginning of 2017. It's been a lot of fun revisiting my formative years with these characters.