Welcome to my worlds!

I'm James Maxey, author of fantasy and science fiction. My novels include the science fantasy Bitterwood Saga (4 books) the Dragon Apocalypse Saga (4 books), numerous superhero novels including Nobody Gets the Girl and the Lawless series, the steampunk Oz sequel Bad Wizard, and my short story collections, There is No Wheel and Jagged Gate. This website is focused exclusively on writing. At my second blog, Jawbone of an Ass, I ramble through any random topic that springs to mind, occasionally touching on religion and politics and other subjects polite people are sensible enough not to discuss in public. If you'd like to get monthly updates on new releases, as well as preview chapters and free short stories, join my newsletter!




Sunday, January 6, 2019

Week 1: 10,400

10,400 words for the first week of January. I've downloaded a tracking calendar that tracks Sunday through Saturday, so I'm cheating a bit on this first week by including writing numbers from last Sunday and Monday, Moving forward my weekly word counts should be cleaner.

This week I wrote two chapters of Nobody Nowhere and finished a chapter of Dragonsgate. The Dragonsgate chapter was pure infodump for the last 3000 words or so, and this informatuion will almost certainly will be chopped up and spread around in later drafts. But, it's a relief to have it behind me. "Show, don't tell," is on most people's list of good writing tips, but it's also probably the number one source of writer's block. You have something big and important to convey and you tie yourself into knots thinking of how to convey it without just having a character deliver a long monologue. But, sometimes, you just need to write the monologue. And at least my monologue is vital to the plot. It's not like Victor Hugo in Les Misérables veering off into a dozen extraneous chapters describing the sewers of Paris.

Goals for the next week: 10,000 words, duh. Very likely in a similar configuration of one Dragonsgate chapter and two Nobody chapters.

Also, along with my writing goals, I'll start posting reading goals. Right now, I'm reading Roots. It's about 900 pages and I'm only 30 pages in, but it's got a good, clean style and engaging characters. I'll try to read at least 200 pages this week. In audio, I'm listening to The Master and Margarita. I listen to audio less frequently since I don't have a commute any more, but hope to listen to at least two more chapters this week.


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