210
A friend of mine, who recently made her first novel sale, has had another book optioned with a nine-month deadline. That led me to do my own number crunching, based on a couple of discussions I've had with my own publisher. In my case, I have an acceptance letter for the first three books of my series, which can stand on their own as a trilogy.
I'm also workshopping a fully-drafted Book #4 and writing Books #5 and #6. I believe those need to stay together as a kind of "second trilogy."
My publisher is interested in those, too. Based on a hypothetical release schedule should everything go forward, I figured that means I'd need to average at least 210 words a day, every day, for almost 2-1/2 years in order to complete #5 and #6.
210 words add up to less than one manuscript page, so when broken into chunks like that it looks quite manageable, with room for Life to throw me a few curve balls. But it's also a long-term commitment. Slow and steady wins the race.
Update, 18 June 2007: Or, in my case, periods where I burst with verbiage. I made the commitment on June 14. In five days I've drafted 8,075 words.
I did the collage using MS Paint and MS Photo Editor. The center portion uses the same images of pond and sky that I used in my collage Summer Solstice. The number is filled by the altered image of the sculpture I'd photographed in Tampa. The background is a duplicated and rotated image of a November 2005 sunset.
210
A friend of mine, who recently made her first novel sale, has had another book optioned with a nine-month deadline. That led me to do my own number crunching, based on a couple of discussions I've had with my own publisher. In my case, I have an acceptance letter for the first three books of my series, which can stand on their own as a trilogy.
I'm also workshopping a fully-drafted Book #4 and writing Books #5 and #6. I believe those need to stay together as a kind of "second trilogy."
My publisher is interested in those, too. Based on a hypothetical release schedule should everything go forward, I figured that means I'd need to average at least 210 words a day, every day, for almost 2-1/2 years in order to complete #5 and #6.
210 words add up to less than one manuscript page, so when broken into chunks like that it looks quite manageable, with room for Life to throw me a few curve balls. But it's also a long-term commitment. Slow and steady wins the race.
Update, 18 June 2007: Or, in my case, periods where I burst with verbiage. I made the commitment on June 14. In five days I've drafted 8,075 words.
I did the collage using MS Paint and MS Photo Editor. The center portion uses the same images of pond and sky that I used in my collage Summer Solstice. The number is filled by the altered image of the sculpture I'd photographed in Tampa. The background is a duplicated and rotated image of a November 2005 sunset.