First Draft: 695 Days, 168 Chapters, 1,166 Pages, 356,851 Words, 2,012,206 Characters · 7:35am Jul 23rd, 2019
Or 1,436 pages, 370,305 words, 2,103,018 characters by google docs reckoning.
When May of this year rolled around, I was sitting at around 150,000 words. In that time, I have averaged 3,000 words almost every single day, including my birthday, until over 200,000 words were added. During that time, I also wrote a few private commission stories as well as my most recent work. I spent a minimum of three hours writing every single day, save for a couple days ago when I couldn't even look at a computer screen without my head feeling like it was splitting open. I only got 1,000 words and 1 hour that day. But I made up for it by writing 5,000 in 5 hours the following day on the back of an extremely rare perfect night of sleep.
I honestly don't know what to say. It's so surreal, and it was a task I for so long thought impossible. When attempting to tackle a project as enormous and ambitious as this, no matter how much I accomplished in a day, it felt like the task was literally unending. I got discouraged, demoralized, and had all but officially given up on more than one occasion. Inertia, fear of failure, and game addiction were prevalent, and excuses came thick and fast. My previous largest project isn't even half as long as this behemoth.
If google docs is to be believed, then this one single story contains significantly more horsewords than all of my previous stories combined. That's insane. I could publish the whole thing, and my word count would more than double overnight.
But I won't. I need to title the story, I need to commission cover art, I need to rewrite early sections, and I need to revise the whole thing. Some scenes I nailed, others need fleshing out. Such as it is with first drafts. That's tomorrow's problem. 73 days of unrelenting hard work have left me feeling like this:
So, that's what I'm going to do. Aside from last-minute con preparation, I'm doing absolutely nothing writing-related until Bronycon, which always gets the creative juices flowing. I'll come back recharged (after I've gotten over the inevitable post-con hangover), then begin revising... and hopefully preparations for actually launching this damn thing.
See some of you at the big con!
Dude, fucking god damn congratulations. That's a herculean accomplishment and you should feel proud.
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Thank you, and you'd damn better believe I am. Horse Voice and I are having a celebratory dinner on Friday.
Way to go, man. Congratulations on reaching the next step!
That's too many.
My stories usually only have like five or six.
I'm not going to be able to keep track of that many names.
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Thanks so much! It feels weird knowing that I don't have to sit down and grind out 3,000+ words today.
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Sometimes the book feels like it has that many characters. I use most of the canon characters (up to S6) in some capacity, and there's probably 1 OC per canon character.
Those are some INCREDIBILIS news, feel proud of not having given in to laziness like I :3, the longest story I've had (and I only have it in Fantiction) is only 128,000 words in 5 days: p but let me tell you that they were in evenings where the imagination literally flowed so much that I swear I exercised almost 12 hours of writing, since I did not go to school or work. You on the other hand uff I can no longer do that without being able to open YouTube and start watching videos to laugh at XD.
I will be patient to see that great story, and until then here I will be, I know that you do not disappoint, the other stories that you have undoubtedly are a sample of what awaits us in that story that you put so much effort and effort :D
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Thanks so much! 128k words in 5 days is a crazy amount. Very few people can write that quickly. I knew that with a project this long, the only way I could succeed was daily goals, which I stuck to until it was finished. I just need to take some time away from it so I can actually get to fixing it up and making sure it's what I'm happy with putting out. I really appreciate the vote of confidence!
Jesus, that's a lot of numbers. But good for you, Gary! Wish I could stop slacking on my fics and just finish them like you have with this one lol. But seriously, that's awesome! You keep up the good work and enjoy Bronycon
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Thanks you! My suggestion is to look at the productivity blog post I made and try putting some of what I said into practice, specifically the routine. Forced routine is how I got here. I had around 30% of the story written and the rest of it at least vaguely outlined; I knew where I was going, mostly, all the major turns in the road, but I needed to put it down. I found writing this thing got easier as it became habitual (until burnout started to set in), since everything was always so fresh. I also wrote so much that even though I'd sometimes go 30-40k words before returning to a perspective, I still last wrote that perspective so recently, I was able to remember the key points.
In your case, try to make writing habitual, and follow through on ideas you like enough to want to put down. If you block off X amount of time to write per day, you'll make progress, and if you do it every day, you'll finish things.
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I will take that in mind, thank you!
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I hope it's useful. TL;DR stinty writing will let you get the occasional short story out there, but anything book-length will take you the better part of a decade, since putting down a lot of words is mandatory for novel writing.