Sunday, November 01, 2009

Novelists: read this!

Here’s a bright idea. The author is a project management pro in his day job, so maybe this is easier for him than it is for you. Nonetheless…

“My writing is carefully planned, and a spreadsheet collects my scene-by-scene word count and provides a projection of overall word count based on average words per scene so far. Thus, I could quickly realize if, for example, I was headed for an impractical word count of 30,000 words or 250,000 words.”
—novelist David Chesworth

2 comments:

EditorJack said...

Just one comment:

NoteBox Disorganizer, the "spreadsheet" for writers

http://mysite.verizon.net/squirreltech/software/index.html

Oh, yeah, baby.

Michael A. Banks said...

I wish I could hit the goals every time I set them. Before computers, I did this manually, and sometimes succeeded. But more often than not life and other projects got in the way.

But project management works for many writers. Create a spreadsheet and go. Or just go; that's how someone like Michael Miller can write a book in one month.
--Mike