600 Words

I set a goal last week to begin writing 600 words a night. This was to break the dry spell of not writing for a few weeks.   It doesn't seem like that many words at all. I imagine the reaction to that goal going something like this.

"Six hundred? Why not a thousand? Two thousand?  Surely if you're planning on writing novels, short stories, and keeping people entertained you can put together more words than that?"

When I think like that I can understand why authors like George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss get annoyed at their fans at times.  I'm not saying that I am in any way comparable to those men, but I happen to enjoy their works.  I love Kvothe, and I think the television series is going to ruin the books for George R. R. Martin.  What I'm saying is that writing is more difficult than most people give them credit for.

Putting together one thousand words and making sure they work takes time.  Making sure your plots that you establish early in the book deliver on the foreshadowing is a pain. If that wasn't bad enough there are days where something is wrong in the story, but when you're up to your elbows in plots it's hard to see what is wrong.  If you've never tried to write long stories, then here is your challenge.

I challenge the casual readers, the people who are out there looking for something more exciting to do than waiting on their favorite authors next book to drop, to write a 600 word story.  It doesn't seem so bad does it?  It's not like I'm asking you to write an eighty thousand word book like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone. In fact there are children's books which have less than one hundred words.  An example is I'll teach my Dog a lot of words by Micheal K. Firth.  The book is one hundred words, and it tells a story.

The reason I'm recommending this is because I gained a new appreciation for the books that I read once I started writing.  Seeing the way they used their words, weaving plot, killing characters, twisting and turning details to keep me guessing, became more satisfying. I looked at the works of other authors as study guides to improve my own writing.  Questions came to my mind: How does R.A. Salvatore plot a fight scene? How does Stephen King plan one of his "Powder Keg" books like Needful Things or Under the Dome? How much research did Orson Scott Card do before he wrote Ender's Game or did he research?  Does Brandon Sanderson plot a single book or an entire series at  one time?

If you don't want to try the challenge, that's okay.  I'm going to keep chipping away at the projects that I have.  I am working on two short stories for different anthologies that I'm hoping to get a spot in. I have a novel I'm rewriting because after two years I've finally realized what is causing the problems in the story.  Then I have the serial update, each of which take 4-5 days at 600 words a day.

Also, if you're counting words this post is 550 words. Seems like I need a few more for tonight.