Sunday, February 8, 2015

Keeping Count by Richard Prosch

So more than a dozen years ago now, I participated in a weekly writer's workshop hosted by a small college and led by an academic writer who claimed to know what he was talking about. He didn't, but he introduced me to the practice of counting words.

This fellar had some goofy ideas, and one of those was his insistence on stream of consciousness writing as the be-all and end-all of creative endeavors.  Then he coupled it with the goal of a specific word count. Two-thousand words per day. Stream of conscious ---GO!

What might have been a fun one-time (or even once-in-while) way to keep things fresh...rapidly got old. And he demanded to see our journals. He had to confirm that 2000 words per day. It didn't matter what you wrote, he said, so long as you moved your wrist. Everybody is a writer he said, no matter if you jot down a grocery list or pen the great American novel.

I suggested that, in that case, I wanted to be more than just a writer. I wanted to be a storyteller. 

He said that if I kept up with 2000 words per day of streaming stuff, I would find stories just sort of emerging out of the detritus.

Except they didn't.  And somewhere between 700 and 2000, the word count always sorta lost its steam. Most of my entries ended up looking like that manuscript written by the possessed guy in Stephen King's book, The Shining. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Naturally, all writers are different. I know some writers like the stream of consciousness thing the same way a potter might like to throw down a hunk of clay just to have something to start whittling away on.  It never really worked that way for me.

And I always thought the goal of a specific word count was a good one. It's at the content level where Mr. Academic and I parted company. A couple thousand words of good work every day makes a fine goal.

But here's the good that came out of it. 

By the end of the workshop I had a real knack for just how much writing constituted 2000 words. Or 1000. Or 500.  

I got so in tune with keyboard clicks and time spent in the chair that I could guess my word number blind, and come pretty close.

Me did not learn how to write gud. 

But I got a feel for word count.

As I've worked to sneak up on longer works of fiction, it's been valuable.

The last few stories I wrote were 10,000 words plus. Holt County Iron is a novella somewhere around 17,000 words.  And that feels a little bit different than writing 5,000 word stories. 

Writing a 30,000 word stories feels different again.

I've long admired genre writers who, under contract, can peg the story's beginning, middle, and end, within a set of assigned parameters.

In my case, I learned there's no such thing as a bad experience when learning the craft --not if you can sift the good from the ill.

After growing up on a Nebraska farm, Richard Prosch worked as a professional writer, artist, and teacher in Wyoming, South Carolina, and Missouri. His western crime fiction captures the fleeting history and lonely frontier stories of his youth where characters aren’t always what they seem, and the windburned landscapes are filled with swift, deadly danger. Read more at www.RichardProsch.com


14 comments:

  1. Good post Richard. Each to his own pace and style. Obviously what worked for him didn't for you. You found your way and write good stuff.

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    1. Thanks Randy! Yes sir. That guy could write some great poems. No way I could do it. I'm glad for the experience!

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  2. Therein the crux of writing, word count and story content. Each writer finds their own comfort style. Here is to the stories we all tell, and the readers who find and enjoy them. Thank you for this useful post. Doris McCraw/Angela Raines.

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    1. Thanks RW! Finding one's way is an ever-changing journey!

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  3. Or...from bad experiences comes learning and ultimately something good?

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    1. That's the truth, Charlie! Thanks for your comment!

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  4. Each day must have started out like another "Ulysses". Who knows what you would end up with.

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    1. Oscar, you're right! I think the word association and stream worked well for the guy because he was more a poet than a fiction writer. I like a little more structure I guess.

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  5. Richard, I never care about word count. Someone once said, (think it was Stephen King) "you can wash garbage, but it's still garbage" or something like that. So you have to have your heart in your writing--and when you are sick or have worries clouding your mind, or have to be gone somewhere, stressing over word count is not conducive to putting your heart into your writing. Some days I could sit down and write and write and write--others, I might not write at all--just depends on what's going on and really, my frame of mind. And really...you didn't need that class. Your writin' is reely gud anyhoo. LOL

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    1. Thanks Cheryl! Wow, you are so right about the distractions of life. Hard to care sometimes if it's 10 words....or eleven!. I think the secret is to average it out. Keep pluggin' and it sorta levels.

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  6. At least you kept the nuggets of the workshop and washed off what, for you, was sand. Funny how you begin to "feel" word count after you've done it for a while. Yeah, I'm not much for hemorrhaging words either. My stream of consciousness is more of a slow-moving bayou.

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  7. Vonn! LOL! I really like that --"slow moving bayou of consciousness." Thanks for stopping by.

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  8. Vonn, I don't know why, but when I read that comment of yours, David Crosby's "Delta" off the Daylight Again album sprang to mind instantly...isn't that funny?
    Cheryl

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    1. I've already noticed that you have an amazing database of songs in your brain, Cheryl.

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