So I had a few minutes at the end of my Friday, and I had a random slightly-sleep-deprived idea to show my second short story anthology metrics in a new and interesting way.
Stay with me on this.
On average, I calculated, the stories in Anthology 1, Deadshepherd, were about 36,000 words long: 24,000, then 33,000, then 42,000 and 42,000 respectively. So that gave me a rough, if not exactly artistically-supportible, idea of where to start.
Therefore, what I have created here is a rough guide to how much of each story is done.
Ugh. That doesn’t look remotely close, does it?
The big problem here, obviously, is the middle two stories which I have barely even started. I have a good idea of how they’re going to go and a good block of notes on them, but I haven’t actually started to write them.
The first and last stories are basically done, although I suspect The First Feast – which I’ve already posted quite a lot of here on the blog – will turn out to be quite a bit larger than the average 36,000 words. I’m certainly not likely to finish it in a few thousand words. So, too, will the first story almost certainly turn out to be larger. That means, if I’m just worried purely about the look of the paperback sitting on the shelf next to Deadshepherd (I’m not), and giving my readers value for money (I am), then the middle two stories can afford to be a bit shorter.
Which doesn’t really help me get any closer to finishing them (or starting them, really). This was just an exercise in lazy weekend meta-writing, I’m not sure how useful it was at all. Just … since I haven’t figured out a way of getting a proper running word count for the anthologies yet[1], I thought this might provide some sort of meter.
[1] I could, of course, just add up the word counts 34,346 + 711 + 935 + 30,278 = 66,270, and say Day 1, 66,270 words (of a possible ~144,000). Maybe that will be easier. Maybe I’ll do that. Opinions and suggestions welcome, I need some way to keep myself regulated in this stupidly busy period.
Proper count resumes, then, after The First Feast, when I kick into Greyblade. I’m currently not ruling out the possibility of just putting The First Feast on hold and launching into Greyblade instead.
Like I say, opinions and suggestions welcome.
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I think when the pie fills blue (36,000 words) but the story runs over, you should just continue with a pie wedge of a different color.
I’m half asleep and I feel like that made sense, but if it didn’t, let me know. I will wake up and clarify.
It does! And I’ll do that, because story 1 ran over last night. Hard.
Like this (and I’m still not finished the darn story):
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