measuring task without end

I think I’m faced with an endless task quandary.  Or at least I think that’s what I’d like to call it.  I’m working on a new short story that will go with a collection of other short stories from various times and eventually be published as my next book on Amazon Kindle.  I’m currently sitting at about 11,000 words on the book.  It’s probably going to take a good six or seven thousand more to finish the story the way I want to finish it.  It will be a nice section in a fairly decent outpouring of work.

Here’s the problem.  I don’t know when this story is going to end, so I have no idea how much more I’m going to write on it.  I don’t know if it’s going to be done in ten sessions or in thirty.  I know I’ve still got quite a bit to go, and making it all interesting and worth reading is part of the challenge. 

In comparison, I’m reading a book about 30 minutes a night and have completed about 1/3 of the book.  I can keep track of how much I’m reading every day and realize just how close to finishing I’m am.  I can judge progress so I can put a deadline on finishing.  With the story I’m writing, all I can do is write, and continue to write at a decent pace so the word count increases on a steady basis and I can see progress being made. 

Since I started taking good track of how much I write, I’ve probably written 4,000 words.  And I’ve done that in less time than it took me to write the original chunk.  So I guess I need to go with what Steven King said and just write.  Write and write and write and write.  Show up every day and write.  Because that’s the only way the story is going to get done. 

If you’d like to know why I haven’t added a new story in three or four years it’s because I haven’t put the effort into writing that I originally put into creating the first story.  I wrote Seven Days over a decent amount of time, but the main part of it was finished in about 2-3 months.  I’d go to the Student Center every day, find a bench and sit down with my laptop and crank out story until my laptop battery died.  Which sometimes didn’t take long, because my laptop battery sucked in those days. 

In the end, it was nothing more than sheer work to get the story finished.  Really, it seemed to me like I had to treat it like a job.  I had to show up every day, regardless of what my brain was telling me.  Because there is always a little part inside your brain telling you to wait until the motivation strikes.  Or wait until you “get an idea”.  Strangely enough, most of the ideas I used in the story flowed together in the midst of writing the story.  I had no idea where anything was going until I started writing it, and even towards the end I still didn’t know.  I would reach the end of an idea, and a new idea would be there, waiting for me to work on.

Hence the purpose of keeping track of my writing.  To see progress and to make sure I’m actually doing the work necessary to complete the story.