Birthday Goals

[alanajoli]

One of the best things about the internet is how easy the various social networking sites make it for friends to remember your birthday. I don't think I've had so many greetings from friends (some who I haven't seen in years!) since college at the very latest. It was so nice to hear from well-wishers that I've decided to make an extra effort to do the same for folks in my network. Hopefully I'll actually succeed!

Birthdays are also a retrospective time, and even though antonstrout was talking about how "resolution" times aren't the best to set goals ("If you want to write, write"--and he's right about that), I do work best under deadlines. So I'm setting a deadline for myself on the new novel I've been percolating/simmering/kicking around for months now. I'm giving myself three months (until January 5) to have a bare-bones draft. This involves giving myself permission to leave gaping holes where I need more research. But I've been batting it around long enough that I need to actually start putting words to screen/paper and making something actually come of it.

Because I also like the word count tools, I'd also love to hear from YA writers/editors on what the ideal word count is for a stand-alone urban fantasy for teens. Any thoughts on that?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Probably 80k is a good thing to aim at, but let the story be what it needs to be, and then worry about those things.

And good luck!

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm looking just for a ball park for the draft so I can make a nice pretty graphic, but I won't take it too seriously at this stage.

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

Maybe this brands me as a little too geeky, but what I do is find a couple of books that I respect enough to emulate length-wise, then scan a typical page, OCR it, import it into Word, count the words on that page, then multiply by the number of pages in the novel. I generally reduce the final word count by 5% to compensate for chapter-end pages that don't take a full sheet. This will give you a pretty accurate word count, and it's certainly better than guessing.

On the other hand, I was shooting for 100,000 words on The Cunning Blood, and ended up with 144,000 words, because that's what it took to tie up all the loose ends. You are not always (completely) the boss of your work.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

That's wonderful! If I had a scanner that wasn't also a printer/fax machine (and had software that currently worked with my computer--I'm still working on this), I'd be tempted to try it out. (Although that's a little more effort than I'd probably actually get around to taking given the need for a just general ballpark.)

[dragonladyflame.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I kinda felt like it made birthday greetings less special or indicative, but I like your perspective better. I think I shall adopt it.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

As I've gotten older, I noticed that the birthday greetings I used to get dropped off pretty sharply. The people who actually remember on their own really impress me. But since I have a crap memory for dates, I don't expect much in the way of memory from everyone else. :) (It could just be that where birthday greetings are concerned, I prefer quantity over quality. *g*)

Tangent: Are you still thinking about doing a guest blog for me on myth? I'd still love to have you. ;) Most of the people I've asked are busy through October, so I'm not looking to start particularly soon, but soonish.

[dragonladyflame.livejournal.com]

I'm just having trouble thinking of a topic. Any suggestions? What's the general audience / purpose of this blog?

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I'm mutually read by a bunch of writer/gamer types, so honestly using myth in role playing would be a fun topic, and something that I imagine you've done. ;)

[dragonladyflame.livejournal.com]

You know, someone just emailed me about that the other day. I have used myth in RPGs, but not to any large extent and I'm not sure how much could be said that's interesting, aside from the fact that myths make good benchmarks and therefore good common ground starting points for RPG stuff. Hmm.