The act of putting words on paper soothes me, as I prepare to dive back into Bar Prep world, which terrifies me. Last time I dove to the bottom of that pool, and it was a long dark swim to the bottom, which took months to recover from. I hope to keep the surface light in sight this time down, but know that it is the darkness of the bottom that will pull me in, to its reaches. The Bar, is like nothing else I have ever done, harder and easier than anything else at the same time. Harder because it allows me to see everyone of my self doubts tossed into the light of testing. And easier because it is just a test, passing it is not life or death, just another step. So with half my time dedicated to the Bar for December, January and February will I also be able to keep up with my writing goals.
I think and hope that I will be able to accomplish this goal of writing as it is a way to relax after a day of work and studying. However, I see that I might be procrastinating on the one thing that is truly difficult for me, Editing. As I write my rough drafts, I do not care about exactness of my words, spelling or grammar; the thing I focus on is the story, and characters. But once I start the editing, no word seems good enough, descriptive enough, or beautiful enough to be the correct word I want to use to tell the story. I never seem to be happy with a sentence once I start to edit, which makes me toss whole sections, chapters, paragraphs in the proverbial trash. So in the creation stage words will flow even as I prepare for the Bar. It is the editing stage that will bring me to a screeching halt. I saw this in November, I was able to easily write 50k words, but only edited about 8000 words half of which went into the trash.
So the question. Do I count all edited words, or only those that end up in the final draft. Which means that some days I could actually have negative word count.
The Veil is an example of this, I wrote yesterday on this project, but as I was writing I was also doing some clean up in the story, since it has been awhile since I writing anything for this story. I ended the day with 71 added words, but a better story. Should I have keep a track of all the words I wrote yesterday, or just the ones in the story now.
Excerpt from The Veil:
In his offices he
looks around calmed by the white on white surfaces, ever paper, book, pen, all perfectly white and
perfectly in its place. His office
calms him and reassures him that there is order in this world. With a smile no, not just this world, in
these worlds. Sitting behind his
desk, he pushes the power button and
his computer screen came to life, he already has a number of messages waiting
for him, digital voicemails, e-mails, but the one he is ignoring is the
instant message that blinks on with the computer. Instead of opening it, he went to the file on
Amelia, found the footage and once again
views the file that gave him hope that he would succeed.
The footage lasted
about five minutes, and it is the grainy gray of security camera footage. She was nine years old and she playing
out front of a large house, really a
mansion, he could not tell what city the house is in, or even what country; this
was not information that he has been given.
The first minutes of the video were of the little girl kicking the ball
around the yard, she was alone, it is in the instant that she kicks the ball
into the street darting out to retrieve it, that interests him.
Is it worth it to loose words, to make the story better. I know the answer to that questions is yes, but when every word counts, it is hard to justify the backspace and delete buttons no matter how much they are needed.
SO to keep me honest I will post my word counts, I will work on a better chart, but for now this will work.
Current word counting Chart:
| 30-Nov | 1-Dec | 2-Dec | 3-Dec | 4-Dec | 5-Dec | 6-Dec | |
| Red Book Expose | 52454 | 2904 | 1682 | 13 | |||
| The Veil | 16071 | 71 | |||||
| Close Corp (edit) | 22143 | ||||||
| Cave City (edit) | 3372 | ||||||
| Ex Nilhio | 13015 | ||||||
| Gutter Punk | 6373 | ||||||
| Total | 2904 | 1682 | 84 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
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