I
am starting to feel a bit more like a writer who is actually doing more than
dreaming about becoming a novelist. July has been my best writing month this
year, as shown in the graph opposite. I wrote 17,127 words of my novel in the
month, an average of 552 words per day. And I reached my target of 500 words or
more on all but two days of the month. Unfortunately, that means that once I
met the quota I did not usually write much more. The most words I wrote in a
day was 821.
I
have now written about 120,000 words of the novel. I had hoped to have the
first draft finished this month, but my characters continue to resist making
the inevitable decision to abandon their search and get to the climax. They’re
not as bad as climate change deniers though. At the moment they are having an
argument and the pro keep-on-searching characters are making a lot of sense,
too much sense for them to just quit looking.
My
characters obviously don’t care that I have committed to write a short story
for a Christmas collection that needs to have the first draft done by the end
of August. So it looks like after this week I might have to stop the novel
writing for a couple of weeks and get onto the short story. This bothers me as
I am so close to the end of the novel, I just want to get its first draft
finished. But at least I have a good idea for the story.
Critiquing.
Once
again I critiqued four stories for critters.org this month. The stories I
critiqued were mostly by beginning writers, so my critiques were longish, two
were over 1200 words. I finally finished a critique of a story for the
Australian Writers Forum that was delayed by technology problems in June.
Reading.
I
read a bit more this month. I finished reading Amnesia by Peter Carey.
It’s not his best novel, but it was still a good read, with a great central
character. He was a journalist/writer secreted away from the law as he writes a
biography of a woman who created a computer virus that released thousands of
asylum seekers from their prisons. It’s a premise that suggests a thriller, but
the book is more about finding out how her life motivated her to release the
virus. I hope to get around to writing a review of it for this blog later this
month.
I
am currently reading a science-fiction classic in Richard Matheson’s I am
Legend. A book that was turned into the classic science-fiction movie The
Omega Man and the not so good recent movie with the same title as the
book.
Non-Fiction.
Yeah,
I know these updates should be only about my fiction writing endeavours, but I
have to plug my Divine articles whenever I get the chance. I have a new article
up on Divine that is all about a fascinating exhibition on the human mind I had
a look at why I was down in Melbourne a few months ago. I really recommend the permanent
exhibition and my article about it.
