I salute you. I always wanted to be a writer, always had a lot of stories and ideas and thoughts to write but I am not a very good writer.

It's not a book if it's 3,000 words or 3,000,000 words. It's a manuscript. And there's absolutly nothing wrong with writing a short story or a novella. If your story takes 30 pages to tell, that's exactly how long it should be.

Yes, I think that's clear. Is this just some absurd last-word thing?

:hscratch: If I had a story to tell, I don't see how I could know that "it will take 30 pages or so to tell all of it." You're focused on page counts, not on telling a story. And any story can be any length by adding character development, subplots, background info, scenery and motivation buildup, etc.

Honestly, it sounds like you have no clue what it means to write. You appear to just want to want to "make a book." Be careful, you might just end up with a neglected manuscript.

Well I ran out of steam at 18 pages and gave it up. Then I went to a Vegas show and got the inspiration for a short story. Emphasis on short story. Two weeks later I have 22 pages written and I'm still going full-steam ahead.

There you go. This sounds a lot more promising to me, for a few reasons. You've got inspiration and a story to tell, and the determination to tell in in exactly as many words as you need to.

Good luck. I'm certain you'll find that writing something for the story will be a lot more rewarding than writing for the vague notion that you want to write a book.

It is certainly more fun :D I keep emphasizing that it's a short story and not a book. The only reason I even keep tabs of pages it's because it's a physical measure that something's being produced.

This morning I actually came up with something that I can do for part 2 and also 3 once I get this part done.

I have the introduction pretty much done. No writing today because I work nights and I have a little 2-hour shindig to attend to with the family, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. I do have the next section all planned out in my head already so it's just a matter of hammering it out.

Well, I'm up to 6500 words or around 25 pages.

I got a point where I told a story but there was no 'point' to the story... i.e. I was just telling a series of events. Driving home I got the idea of turning it into an episode of something like Tales From The Crypt, with five parts (not all of them will be the same length) and I'm just about done with part 1 and starting part 2. So there's still no 'point' to the story (i.e. moral) but it's creepy :D

I can't see it taking 60k words, but who knows.

Seeker sent you an message... did you get it?

Got the eee PC and was able to write a few pages while waiting for a friend's graduation, and I have an hour wait tonight while I wait for "The Producers" to begin, so I should be able to hammer out a few pages today.

Edit: Up to 7984. That means I wrote about 1484 words today... inspiration hit. But the best part is that I have the framework of the story so all I have to do now is just write and fill in the details.

htat's like 35 double spaced pages. if that''s 30%, you're writing a story, not a book. maybe a novella....but not a book.

I edited the first post weeks after I posted the thread. I started with a short story. Now it's getting to be a longer story. Once I finish the current outline we'll see what else I come up with.

Gator,

I am envious. I have had the idea to write some stories for a long time, with my goal to get a book written before I turn 30. I just turned 35 this year. Guess what. I don't have a book written. I have a fair amount of short stories though, so at least my time wasn't completely wasted.

I feel that I do have something of more weight to tell, so I might use you as inspiration (or at least catalyst) to get going again. Who knows what the result will be?

On a side note: do you want somebody to proof-read your work and comment on it? Not that I am a reference in that field, but I'd love to read what an "amateur" could write and see if I can write on the same level.

It's official, I've passed 10,000 words !!! :D Yay go me! :D

Started on December 16th.

Sorry I'm not really sharing it with Internet people.

I still want to finish the story by my birthday and have it bound. I'm going to wrap it up and addressed to me but the From will be blank. Then when I'm opening presents I'll wait until someone hands me that one and I'll someone else to open it, and I'll insist, and then sit back and enjoy their faces when they hold a "book" in their hands written by me :D For someone who wants to be a writer, it's the best present in the world.

:hscratch:

I think this whole thread is a gag... albeit a very strange one.

Well, 11,144 words and counting. Got the idea for expansion #2 yesterday. I think arc 2 is going to be about 40% of part 1 (as in if part 1 is 100k words part 2 would be an additional 80k words, to use nice round numbers) (and I'm about 30% done with part 1).

Does anyone know of a good program that helps organize story parts? Now that it's getting to be bigger and bigger it's easy to get lost in it. I don't go chronologically - I write whichever part I'm inspired to write that day. It's been easy to manage up to now but add 40k more words and I can see it being troublesome.

Thanks! :)

40% of 100k is 80k? :hscratch:

40% of the WHOLE story... i.e. part b comprises 40% of the story and part a comprises 60% of the story... so if the story is 180k words, part a is 100k words and part b would be 80k.

What is it with people and nitpicking... I'll make sure to have a statistics book and calculator next time I post.

Let's put it in non-mathematical terms - part B will be slightly smaller than part A, but not by much, and together they comprise the whole story as it stands now.

In other news, did quite a bit of progress today and got up to 12,367 words (and no, I'm not going to post daily updates, just every 10k words... but since I'm already posting...).

After 29 years of wanting to write something and finally getting to actually write something, it's the best feeling in the world. Around 50 pages in Wordpad, 12 font, double spaced. This is the most I've ever written in my life that has been one story.

On a related note, my work pays up to $2k a year in tuition and books, so I take classes online for the fun of it. I signed up for my two Spring classes before the story idea came to me and it turns out one class is directly related to it and another has something to do with it, although not related. I've been keeping my eyes open to see if anything sparks any further creativity.

You've been wanting to write a book since you were born? Even though you couldn't read until you were 4 or 5?

You could always be a part of Dawn's forth coming book Cherry Pop

Typo. 20 years.

Seems to me you are STILL concentrating on word and page count. You should JUST concentrate on writing and see where it takes you.

I haven't focused on page count for weeks now, so that's out of the window.

I like word count because it's something I can quantify. Each 10,000th word is a milestone for me. So it's not the word count itself, it's what it signifies: I created something.

:thumbsup:

Overall quantity does not equal actual quality.

I think you're missing the point a LOT of folks have been trying to make. Reading your posts here, it sounds like this is almost entirely an exercise in vanity. The whole bit about you mailing this thing to yourself and holding it out for everyone to see ... I'm sorry. It's just odd. Typing something up, printing it, and having it bound does not make you a writer. Reaching some arbitrary number of words does not make you a writer. WRITING makes you a writer (without comment on quality, of course - anyone can be a writer, but few can be a good one).

If this is an exercise you want to do, that's great. But ... posting about it here is inviting comment, and everything about this is just weird. I really hope you do learn to write for the sake of writing. It seems like you're focused on all the wrong things and writing for all the wrong reasons. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so.

Who said anything about mailing it to myself... I was going to order a physical copy from one of those places that bind them for $8 or so. This is a life-long dream. Once I have a copy in my hand, it will be complete. Who cares if it sells or not. I want to hold something I wrote. My family has been hearing me talk about writing a book for ages... of course it'd be a great moment for me to show them something physical - it's not all talk, I went and -did- it. So for me this is about making a dream into a reality.

I also do better with steps. "Write a book" is too daunting and overwhelming. Write this part, write that part, etc., is more manageable. A good analogy is to be able to lift 100 lbs. You start with 10, then 20, then 30, etc. It's just a way to measure progress.

I have never written 10k words about one thing in my life, which is why it is a big deal for me. Once I read 20k, it will be the same, and so on, and so on, until I finish the story, however long that is. If you go on a 600-mile trip you tend to look at the signs that show how many miles are left. The miles is not the essence of the trip, the destination is. But you keep track of the miles because it makes you feel like you're making progress towards the goal.