24,662 words - virtually 50% finished. Tonight's words are chapter 32 onwards. Today was quite productive. The new storyline has energized me and is taking the overall story in an interesting direction. I'll be taking a day off tomorrow. Fridays have been declared rest days by my wife, which is fair enough.
22,009 words - hanging in there (see ch. 31 onwards). Decided to introduce a sub-plot, to liven things up. It's about a Silicon Valley graphics designer named Dave Darwin, who has just started a social software company. The themes of avatars and social software which I'm introducing here will eventually merge with Declan Atomz's world of ETs and two-way communication.
Man *what* a struggle, 20,059 words - here they are (ch. 28 onwards for today). But I'm not that happy with tonight's words. I think the quality is not great. I had to interupt my writing a couple of times. Bah! Hopefully tomorrow is better. Well, later today - as it's now after 12am. Need sleep. Lots.
18,297 words, here's the latest. I've also added it to the menu. Still on track, but I didn't get much done in the weekend. I was zonked out with the flu on Friday and Sat, watched the rugby on Saterday night (ABs through to semi against aussie), then went to The Matrix Revolutions on Sunday (no spoilers, but what a stunning movie!!). So on Monday I had some time/words to make up. And it was slow going, it wasn't till the last 1000 or so words that I started getting into the groove. Hopefully I'm now in the zone for the rest of the week. I see Erik Benson is travelling at a great rate of knots in the word race. But as long as I'm reaching my own targets I am happy.
It's Day 8 and my word count is 14,778. Here's the latest. I took yesterday off. Have got a bit of flu, but the show must go on. I'm trying not to take my novel too seriously, having a bit of fun with it. Today I came up with the concept of "space blogs". Heh.
Extraordinary Evidence is now the working title of my novel. I will probably change it later, because it's been used quite often. It comes from the late great Carl Sagan. I read his novel Contact in the early 90's I think and obviously it is an inspiration for my current project. As Mr Sagan said in this interview: "...Precisely because of human fallibility, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
12,288 words. Here it is. btw I accidentally discovered an error in the very first sentence today. How embarrassing. So I fixed it up...I thought about leaving it in there, as proof that I haven't done any revisions yet. But then there are probably plenty of other bits of evidence of that!
I may take a day off tomorrow. It'll be Friday night and usually I stay away from the computer then. If I go at 2000 words per day, then that gives me 5 "days off" during November in order to reach 50,000. I'll see how I feel.
I've decided to go the whole hog and post my novel online. There are a variety of reasons for this. One is that posting excerpts would mean it would be read out of context. If I'm prepared to post excerpts, I may as well just tell the whole story. Oh and another reason is that Erik Benson dared me to :-)
So here it is, all 10,035 words so far. Remember if you do read some of this (and I certainly am not expecting you to), there have been no revisions and I haven't fixed up the spelling or grammar mistakes. It's a first draft, with all the ugliness expected of first drafts. And it ain't Hemingway, but what the hey...
8,120 words. I'm wondering whether to post excerpts online. Hmmm.
6,086 words. Had to struggle to reach this. Started at 8.30pm and finished about 11.10pm. Man this is hard work and I'm only 3 days in. 27 more days to go! The good news is I'm still working at 2,000 words per day, but I suspect I'm going to have to put in a couple of good weekends of writing - so I can have a break on some days. Erik Benson is at 4,848 words after 2 days - wow!
Sorry my weblog writing is taking a back-seat this month (not to menion my reading!). My novel has some interesting themes though, especially of communication. Even if the end result is a dodgy novel, the process I'm going through will be worth it (one hopes).
No the All Blacks didn't exactly hammer Wales, but hopefully the process of having a tough game will be worth it for them too ;-)
4,062 words, so I'm keeping pace with the 2000 words per day goal I've set myself. I notice I'm currently first amongst the 15 or so Wellington writers :-)
Enough writing for today. I'm off to watch the All Blacks hammer Wales in the rugby World Cup.
