{"id":4607,"date":"2009-05-26T15:38:52","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T19:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=4607"},"modified":"2009-05-26T15:38:52","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T19:38:52","slug":"the-critical-mass-progress-meter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/the-critical-mass-progress-meter\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Critical Mass” Progress Meter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" Just kidding. I don’t really have such a meter — except in my head.<\/p>\n

The progress being metered, as you may guess if you’ve visited here before, is progress towards completion of a book — especially a novel. You can find real such tools scattered around the Writing Web, enabling you to depict your progress en route to some expected goal (a word count, most likely). A particularly snazzy one is at the StoryToolz site<\/a> <\/a>(requires free registration); not only does it show the progress linearly, it also provides a link to more detailed information, showing how the daily word count progressed (or didn’t) day-by-day, for example.<\/p>\n

In the weekend writing workshop I took years ago (and wrote about here<\/a> and here<\/a>), David Gerrold provided us with blank daily progress tracking sheets. Like other such tools, they require that you set a daily word-count goal, using whatever criteria you want. A given writer might work it out like this:<\/p>\n

Hmm, I have a day job, so maybe 100 words would be good on those days…<\/em><\/p>\n

…and maybe 500 words a day on weekends…<\/em><\/p>\n

…which totals up to 1500 words a week, or on average say 200(ish) words a day.<\/em><\/p>\n

So you’d set your benchmark at 200 words a day. Every day, without fail, you’d record the number of new words you set to paper, and note the percentage of your target achieved. I forget what the exact rules of thumb were, but David told us that on average, say, a 30% accomplishment, especially day after day, constituted “breakdown”; 50% or above, success; and 80% or above, breakthrough.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Whatever the exact numbers might be, you’re aiming to hit the breakthrough mark not every day — it just doesn’t (probably can’t) happen — but on average, over time. At that point, if you want, I guess you could reset the goal so you’re constantly pushing harder.<\/p>\n

I used the progress charts while working on Crossed Wires<\/em><\/a>, and continued using them during the early weeks of writing the first draft of Grail<\/em><\/a>. Eventually this trailed off, and I didn’t use them at all during succeeding drafts of it, my tech books, or (more recently) Merry-Go-Round<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

What happened? Did tracking my daily word count stop “working”?<\/p>\n

Nope. What happened was that in the middle of Grail<\/em>‘s first draft I crossed a line for the second time, and recognized that I’d crossed it before. I recognized the feeling of having attained critical mass<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here’s how Wikipedia defines<\/a> that term in its original context — nuclear physics:<\/p>\n

A critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article goes on to explain that there is no single magic-number critical mass; the actual amount of material needed to trigger such a sustained chain reaction varies depending on, well, on different circumstances — none of them applicable in the context of writing.<\/p>\n

The main element of this feeling when I’m working on a book is an internal, almost mystical certainty: I <\/em>know I am going to finish this book<\/em>. I don’t know how good it’s going to be, mind you. But the arrow’s been released.<\/p>\n

Two important details about the writing-critical-mass experience, at least as I’ve encountered it, at some point, in writing every book (including the non-fiction):<\/p>\n

First, it never happens early. It might hit as early as (say) 10,000 words into the manuscript, and it might hit at around 20,000 or so. I suppose it’s possible to use chapters instead of words.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the number or what it stands for, I seem to require some basic “core” sense — that I know enough about the book’s structure, the arc of its storyline, the facts in the book, the tone and voice, the characters — before I really have confidence in attaining the outcome, the finished book. And the confidence is tightly bound up with the actual act of completion.<\/p>\n

Second, and more importantly: If I don’t write every day, or close to it, I’ll never hit the critical-mass moment. I’ll lose the thread. I’ll lose my sense of… well, my sense of proprioception within the overall mass of the book: my sense of proximity to the beginning, the middle, the end.<\/p>\n

(This is why, incidentally, I’ve never understood people who can write to their satisfaction if they write only when inspiration strikes, or it just feels right, or the planets align, or whatever. I mean, I believe<\/em> them. But I’d never be able to write anything that way — nothing long, anyhow. Gotta be close to every day for me. The upside to which, btw, is that writing every day seems to increase the frequency and quality of the Muse’s visits.)<\/p>\n

If you’re wondering if I’ve hit critical mass with the current draft of Grail<\/em>, the answer is no. And I don’t know when I will hit it.<\/p>\n

But I did have a strange experience, for — I think — the first time ever in my writing any fiction, of any length: I had a couple of dreams last night featuring this book’s characters. They weren’t significant dreams; they didn’t resolve plotting difficulties or character inconsistencies. Nothing like that.<\/p>\n

And yet they were unmistakably these characters.<\/p>\n

Weird. Maybe this is a different sort of critical mass.<\/p>\n

That ever happen to any of you?<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

The image at the top of this post comes from Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. It demonstrates, says the information on that page, “that there is not necessarily one set ‘critical mass’ — the amount of mass needed to go critical can depend on the exact arrangement used in assembling the material.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just kidding. I don’t really have such a meter — except in my head. The progress being metered, as you may guess if you’ve visited here before, is progress towards completion of a book — especially a novel. You can find real such tools scattered around the Writing Web, enabling you to depict your progress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1cj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4607"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4618,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4607\/revisions\/4618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}