*grins*

*winks*

Seriously, that makes sense. I certainly understand the power of deadlines.

And if my parents hadn’t given me such a cool name, I would probably blog under a pseudonym, too. Luckily, Lookit and Itsallabout Me weren’t about to give their only son a boring name.

Thanks for visiting. Come back often.

For clarification, I don’t have a contract for a 90,000 word novel. But I’m going to pretend I do so I will be forced to keep my writing focused.

Now, you must be thinking “but you mentioned an agent and she expects a product on a certain date.” Since this is your first time on my blog, allow me to explain.

Linda (that’s me) has an agent. My agent keeps me on a deadline. I’m published and my agent is shopping three book proposals.

Auria Cortes (that’s my pen name) doesn’t have an agent. But I will implement a deadline because I notice it works for Linda. This blog is normally about me, but Linda’s experience creeps in once in a while

Boy, I hope I didn’t confuse you.

This is the first time I’ve read your blog (came across it on the Absolute Write forum). I thought your exchange with AJ was interesting — I’m a hobbyist, certainly, and while I don’t think I’d enjoy tearing up 20,000 words worth of work, you’re right that since I’m not on a deadline and don’t have a contract for anything, it doesn’t much matter except for my own need to keep the ball moving up the field. If you have a contract for a 90,000 word novel by a date certain, on the other hand, every word you have to rewrite represents additional effort for which you don’t get paid.

I’m an attorney, and I frequently write briefs setting out my client’s arguments. I have a deadline and, usually, a page limit, so my chief concern is making all of the necessary arguments as persuasively as possible without going over the limit. Two years ago, I had to edit a younger attorney’s draft brief down from 40 pages to 20 — think about all of that wasted effort, both hers and mine.

My point is, I feel your pain. Glad to see that you’re going forward again confident that this time you’re going in the right direction.

Thanks for the link! I’d seen those around, but I’d forgotten where.

Now I shall have pretty little word meters.

Here’s another meter I sometimes use: http://www.writertopia.com/toolbox/meters

It’s much cooler than the one on this post.

I viewed the HTML source around your word meter to see where it came from. It seems to come from

http://languageisavirus.com/nanowrimo/word-meter.html

:oohs at the options:

I swear, when I have time one of these days I’m going to write a Wordpress plugin for word meters.