Comments | rj_anderson: The Author's Progress

rj_anderson

The Author's Progress

Oct 16, 2007 12:16

I've just finished Chapter Five of Touching Indigo, which might not sound like much at first. But since my chapters average 17-18 pages, that brings me up to approximately 23,200 wordsI'm nearly a quarter done! Woo hoo ( Read more... )

status report, writing, ultraviolet, wordcount

Comments 15

tamarak October 16 2007, 16:36:59 UTC

Hark!

You're on your way. :)

cesario October 16 2007, 16:37:12 UTC

Yay! The troublesome chapter five!

Can't wait to read it.

(The comment has been removed)

rj_anderson October 16 2007, 17:17:58 UTC

And so have you! Congratulations on getting your memoir proposal out the door!

faerie_writer October 16 2007, 17:00:08 UTC

Really? Your chapters are 17-18 pages? Mine are always between 7-12. So like I'm just finishing Chapter 21, but I'm only on page 166. Weird, eh? ;)

rj_anderson October 16 2007, 17:17:39 UTC

Yeah, pretty much every chapter I write, no matter what the project, ends up being 4500-5500 words. It just feels like the most natural length to me as a writer.

As a reader, though, I scarcely pay attention to chapter length unless they're exceptionally short (like 100 words or less) or annoyingly long (as in Ursula LeGuin's The Other Sea, which was a very hard book to put down and not in a good way -- great writing, but with three kids I needed to be able to stop SOMEWHERE, and it annoyed me at times that her scenes kept going and going even when there wasn't anything particularly exciting happening in the plot).

faerie_writer October 16 2007, 17:31:58 UTC

"It just feels like the most natural length to me as a writer."

Funny, how writers all have different takes on what feels natural. :)

rj_anderson October 16 2007, 17:45:34 UTC

Funny, how writers all have different takes on what feels natural. :)

Oh, I know. It's been very hard for me sometimes to give myself permission to do things differently from other writers whom I greatly respect. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that their way must be the "right" one -- that since it works so well for them, it's what I ought to be doing as well. But when I try to adopt another writer's methods, more often than not it ends in creative disaster. I think I'm just going to have to blunder along and find my own way. :)

Thread 6

ljrags October 16 2007, 17:24:06 UTC

Hurray!! Keep up the good work. Can't wait to read this one!