September still has a week to go, but the stats are looking pretty good for work on American Dream On. While work on various other projects, including three short stories and a quiz, has slowed substantially, this has been the output 24 days into this first full month of work on the novel:
31,294 words (~125 pp) in 15 chapters
Suffice it to say that I’m pretty ecstatic about this. That’s just over 1300 words (~5+ pp) a day, every day, which includes several days that I’m not able to write, such as when I’m overnight at a debate tournament (second one coming up tomorrow). Now obviously the quality has yet to be evaluated fully (editing takes some time), but actually slogging out the execution is the real bulk of writing work, both in terms of time and energy.
As far as the experiment of working on this as a full-time schedule vs. trying to integrate it with a day job, it’s worth noting that I only wrote about 19,000 words (~76 pp) of the book from June 2002 through July 2009. So, uh, 76 pages in 85 months vs. 125 pages in 24 days. I think we can close the book on any experimental wonderings about what allows me to do my best work.
Not that this is a surprise, of course – this whole life is based on trying to take the summer of 2001 and apply it to a year-long or even multi-year scale. But I’m almost starting to wonder whether three books in a year is a – gulp – conservative estimate of what I can do when I get rolling. The major question on that front will revolve around how much down-time (if any) I need between books and on whether I can keep this roaring pace going for months on end. Certainly deadlines create incentives, though their value may be diminished when I’m on a pace to beat them by almost a month. We’ll see how well I’m still chugging along come Thanksgiving.
If there’s a message that’s more widely applicable from all this, it’s probably a familiar one: you have no idea what you might be capable of without the bonds of a daily obligation to school or work.
I just hope the book’s good. I’m certainly enjoying writing it, but the proof will be in everyone else’s opinion. Of course, no previews are available since I very much try to avoid others’ opinions impacting the actual process as I’m working on the piece. But at this rate, Christmas might be coming early for those of you intrigued.
