3 million organized fictional words. That's about how much I figure I've written in my life.

At this point in my writing adventure, I'm more or less judging things by my own standards. I think I'm probably twice the writer I was when I started, and half the writer I want to be.

That doesn't mean that people are going to like my books twice as much though. It's just an internal gauge about how much I'm learning.

Most of the improvement comes down to the process of incubating my creativity and then letting it happen. The more relaxed I become, the better the writer.

That and just discovering through the trial and error of 3 million words.

At least, that's what I think.



Sometimes I struggle to find the connectors, the plot elements that tie the characters and plots together.

Sometimes, like on my walk on Wednesday, my brain just starts firing off connector after connector, so fast I can't keep track of them. I worry that they are a little too neat, but it's better to have too many and then cut than to have too few.

Why, oh why, do I write such complicated plots?

This book is basically all flashback.

Now, there is a grand tradition of such books. A group of disparate travelers gather at a castle and each tells the tale of how they arrived there. That is roughly what I am doing here, and it feels right. A series of almost short stories unified by a grand threat.

I'm trying to keep this at novella size, under 30K words, so I can submit it to Amazon Singles. I don't expect them  to take it, but no harm in trying. I figure I can probably handle rejection by now without losing hope.

So far I don't feel I've written a clunker chapter. I had one chapter that someone else thought missed the mark and upon examining it, I thought it could be improved by expanding it into 3 chapters. But other than that, I really like what I've written.

However, I'm realizing that not everyone probably is enamored. The number of readers declines with each entry, which means that people are dropping away and I've failed at grabbing them.

But again, I'm measuring progress by my own gauge, and I know this is much more accomplished than anything I thought I could do.