Today's Word Count: 1,766
Overall Word Count: 72,864
"I don't enjoy writing. I enjoy having written." - George R.R. Martin
Not George R.R. Martin. Joe Strummer.
For the longest time; i.e., until I started writing, and even then, only really until a few weeks ago, I could not understand this quote by Martin. Even in the first two months of writing this book, I found myself continually thinking, "How can you not enjoy writing? This is a blast! I love getting this stuff onto the page! I love surprising myself!"
But as I get into the fourth month of this draft, I can start to feel it. It can be a drag. I'm still really happy with what's coming out, and it's going the way I wanted and hoped but...it's hard. It feels like work now. I think, and I confirmed with my wife, that this feels the same way she feels when she takes on an overly ambitious knitting project: a large blanket, say. It starts fun, starts to become a grind by the end, and then she gets to be thrilled with the end product.
I can understand now why Stephen King says he tries never to take more than three months for the first draft of a novel, even a long one. The narrative can lose its bright shiny edge, the characters can start to feel like characters, and all of a sudden it becomes work rather than play. On the other hand, maybe that's why Martin doesn't enjoy writing; how dull must that edge get when you're working five or six years on the same manuscript?!
Anyway, today was very productive. The last three weeks, I've been caught up in a project at work that involved a ton of writing: I wrote basically every single word of copy for a six-page newspaper ad that's going to go out in a couple of weeks. Whenever I'm writing that much at work, it's extra hard to come home and write. I think I have 1,000-2,000 words a day in me, and sometimes I have to spend them all at the office.
Still in the home stretch. Back on the horse. First draft done...soon.
