Word Count Update! Hit the Party Button!

Post date: 19-Jul-2019 03:23:01

Seriously though, I've been a busy beaver on this writing front. But first! The in-progress word counts:

Love/Horror Short Story Collection Word Count: 35,500

Dystopian Novel Word Count: 27,000 (still)

I'm very happy with how this collection is turning out. There's a lot of variety, even with the theme of love-based-horror. If I may entice you to read a story, then check out Stephen King's "Nona" as soon as possible. I feel like it eclipses all of my stories' achievements so far, but that story is a lofty goal to shoot for, friendos.

I plan to make another round of submissions early next week, as a few publications are closing their reading period at the end of this month. I plan another round in August once other publications' reading periods open back up. I expect many rejections, but such is the beast of the writing world.

At this point I have 10 stories (2 unfinished), and I cannot properly express how good it feels to be writing this much again. I did a lot of writing for my old machinima series, RTA (and others), but that was a bit different. Scripts don't have narrators or a POV, or at least mine didn't. Those scripts were mostly a cacophonous blend of characters each vying for their time to shine (Lil' Rey was the loudest, of course). As any writer will tell you, POV is hard to manage at times, but I feel like I'm getting better at it. I've been writing stories since I was about 7 years old, so I'd better be getting better at it!

Confession time: most of my writing projects failed. I started a misguided, largely cribbed novel back in 2003, and got 50,000 words into it when it just fell apart. I think I can rework that one someday, but today is definitely not that day. Then, I started a writing challenge in one of my classes some years ago, claiming I would pen 1,000 words per day if they could keep up with the coursework. I managed 500 words per day, and then just stopped since I had no plan and the damn characters just weren't plotting for me. Then, recently if you've been here before, I started a dystopian novel. Mostly plotted, but it cacked out at 27,000 words because, I dunno, life sucks sometimes.

THEN, I wrote TDM (buy a copy if you like, it's also free on the homepage here). And that shit came together like tar and feathers. Felt good. It's a nonsensical collection of wacky bullshit and wacky philosophy, Discordianism as it were, but it just felt good to grab words from the aether and record them as they came.

Look, I know I'm all over the place creatively. That's my gig, man. I have too many engrossing hobbies, son. But, I've written 85,500 words since last September, and that feels super good. I'm setting a pace for 100k words per year, and that's lightning fast for me.

What about the music/gamedev/videos? I'm formulating a plan. A schedule, as un-sexy as that sounds, but while my projects are slow to materialize, I promise to take the time to make it worth your time. And money should the spirit move you.

Until then, as the eminent philosopher Vash the Stampede once said (several times): Love and Peace!

-OCL