I love how it feels to consistently reach “the end”.
While everyone – and I mean everyone – is a creator in one form or another, not everyone is an artist.
There are a wide range of arts to consider. Fiber arts, music, dance, painting, sculpture, writing, cake creation and decoration, and so much more.
Artists, in my experience, tend to come in 4 varieties: wannabes, amateurs, hacks, and pros.
Pros intentionally make money from their art. It may or may not be their full-time gig, but they create with the intent to sell what they make. Pros love the art they do and strive to do it regularly.
Amateurs might or might not make money from their art. It’s not a full-time gig, and they might create just for the sake of creating and any joy that it brings them. Amateurs love the art they do and strive to do it regularly.
Hacks care only about the money they can make from their art. They pander to their audience, such as writing what they think will sell rather than what they’re passionate about. This is where bad actors will likely come from who might abuse generative AI. Hacks don’t love their art, they care only about money they can make from it.
Wannabes might plan, consider, and desire to create art. The writer who starts but never finishes, the painter who never completes a canvas, or the actor who never auditions for a role. They love their art, but one fear or another stops them. Wannabes love the art and they desire to do it but don’t commit to it, even as an amateur.
As a pro or amateur artist, consistently doing your art is deeply fulfilling.
Reaching “the end” when writing is amazing
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been pushing myself to be more consistent with my writing.
While I write every day, my fiction doesn’t always get the same treatment.
Every pro writer I’ve encountered, read about, or otherwise learned about practice consistency. Timothy Zahn writes 1500 words a day, Somerset Maugham wrote every day starting at 9am, Steven Pressfield writes daily, and the list goes on and on.
When it comes to my fiction, I aim for the same goal as Tim Zahn and work to write 1500 words a day, minimum. I don’t stop at 1500 words, but if I reach a stopping point before I hit my 1500, I keep going.
If I’m not putting work into a book underway, I’m plotting, planning, or world-building another work.
Much as I avoided writing as a planner for a long time – I’ve found that working from a plan allows for better plotting and ease of consistency. I’m still a pantser at heart – since my plan tends to be just a guideline, what gets written is more improvised.
There is a tremendous amount of joy that comes with reaching “the end” of a given book.
After plotting my new Savagespace sci-fi series (originally 6 books, which might now be 3 or 5 books, depending) I started writing it in April 2022. As of this writing (at the start of August 2023), I’ve nearly finished the originally plotted book 5.
It’s so exciting to reach “the end” of a book. But there’s only 1 way to do so.
Consistency is everything
While I started work on the actual books that make up Savagespace in April 2022, I began the worldbuilding for this series in February 2021. The chapter-by-chapter outline – the plan for the series – started then.
Via consistent work, I’ve gone from an idea started in 2021 to nearly 5 finished books as of August 2023. Two and a half years. At this pace, I anticipate completing the books in the series in the fall (September or October 2023).
Getting from the idea to completed work required tremendous consistency.
Not to brag, but to offer perspective, here are some word counts:
The world-building document: 42,154 words
The chapter-by-chapter plotting document: 49,334 words
- Book 1: 56,888 words
- Book 2: 46,791 words
- Book 3: 53,178 words
- Book 4: 57,572 words
- Book 5: 38,448 words (and counting)
Total words written for Savagespace from 2/21 – 8/23: 344,365 words.
For context, that’s just shy of 700 pages, single-spaced, on a letter-sized page.
I have only been able to do this because of consistency. Without consistent writing, I’d not have gotten all of this done in 2.5 years.
That’s a lot of writing. And this is only my fiction work – and not all of it. During these 2.5 years, I wrote the 5th and final novel of my Void Incursion series (58,443 words), and a short story in my Forgotten Fodder series (3,577 words). Additionally, I’ve begun worldbuilding 2 more new books/series (39,735 words and 664 words, respectively).
This brings my grand total of fiction writing, since February 2021, to 446,784 words – approximately 900 pages single-spaced on a letter-sized page.
How did I do this? Consistency.
Consistency is not perfection
Let’s address the elephant in the room.
I didn’t consistently write 1500 words a day, every single day, since February of 2021. All you need to do is the math – if 2.5 years is 911 days, and I wrote on every one of them – I’d have written just over 490 words a day.
That’s not even half of my 1500 words per day goal.
Let me be honest – I only apply my 1500 words per day goal Monday – Friday. I don’t usually write fiction on the weekend – but sometimes I do. But it’s not counted in my consistency.
Also – since February 2021, I’ve taken probably 2 or 3 vacations. So about 3-4 weeks of little to no writing.
And then, just to put a cherry on top – there are weekdays I didn’t make my goal. On some of those days, I fell well short of 1500 words, and even sometimes wrote no words of fiction at all. The reasons for this vary from a busy day with my job eating all my time, something taking precedence over writing fiction, procrastination, and blatant laziness.
Consistency has let me get a lot of work done. But it’s not been perfect consistency. And that’s okay.
Working consistently is not working to perfection. That’s because not only is it utterly unreasonable to expect perfection – its definition is wildly variable. Perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
I love how it feels to consistently reach “the end”. It’s a perfectly imperfect practice, and consistency is not the same as perfection.
I love my art, love to create, and consistency is the key to finishing books and other creative works.
As I share my creative journey with you, I conclude with this – how are you inspired to be your own creator – whatever form that takes?
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