Running the Numbers

Whew.  I managed to submit a 5000 word story Thursday night.  I've been chipping away on it since September 18th,  Here and there, a quick and dirty estimation is that I spent 25 hours on it.  If it sells, I could get one hundred dollars for it, which would work out to two cents per word.

I got carried away and should have kept it at 1000 to 2000 words, which would have been closer to the the more professional pay rate of five cents a word.     Using two cents per word as a starting point, I was writing about 500 fairly usuable words per hour.  Hmmm.  That doesn't exactly include editing, but I'm going to gloss over that for now.  But if I get paid for this story (and that's an if) what would mean (500 words/hour times 2 cents/word)  ten dollars per hour.    Something's wrong there, because if I spent 25 hours on the piece, getting paid a hundred dollars works out to four dollars per hour.   

Once again, Ursula Le Guin is vindicated and "writing to get rich is a damn fool idea."

And... yeah; if having a library of book royalties is going to ease my golden years, I'm going to have to actually write a book.

Writing Moments

Writing in the car is paradoxic and strange.

The car's engine is off. I wonder how long the car battery will last with the ignition key turned half-way, classical music playing on the radio and the car's clock counting down the minutes until I have to hop out and go to work.

A wireless keyboard rests on my lap; I'm staring at the iPad, which is propped up on the steering wheel.

This narrative I'm working on is moving forward, even though the car is still.

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Later.

I'm trying to write, and it's a chore. I'm tired. My throat hurts. I give myself permission to rest.

But after the rest, which goes on much longer than I expected, I'm looking at the stack of revisions I have to do with a sense of weariness. I always seem to feel tired and rundown when I have a largish chunk of time to write. So here I am, trying to jump-start writing by blogging.

On the business side, the computer with my submission tracking software on it died. This isn't so bad, and I have a back-up, only runs on a different platform. I'll have to see about porting it somehow. And then there's that longish, wandering, non-fiction thing I wrote. I should do something with that--on one hand, I could serialize it; but on the other hand, it might be interesting to e-publish it and see where it goes.

Ugh. Business decisions. Quick! Start writing!