A Plague on Both Your Houses

A Plague developed at the day job, which then traveled home. I have never been this sick before and was out for four of five workdays (the one day I was there was only part of the day). I have never used that much sick time ever in my life, and I've had colds and flus.

This flu, though, was devastating, and I was vaccinated.  Luckily, the kids seemed to get through it rather quickly (good that they didn't suffer much). 

My wife and I, on the other hand, have been wrecked. We're still recovering after a week in. There is a possibility, from our research and info from the CDC, that this was H1N1. It was a fairly virulent strain that swept through my colleagues and took out most of our department. 

The one day I was in, the place was like a ghost ship. Those who weren't down with illness warned off the rest of us with Lysol, or were holed up somewhere hoping that isolation would save them.

Needless to say, very little writing done this week. For the entire week, I logged 639, down from nearly 4,000 the week before. 

This illness was one bad motherfucker. 

Daily Words

I completed my penance for not writing much this week by banging out 2722 words on a story that I was expecting to finish, but, as with all stories, other things came up in the way of plot.

So, almost to the end, but not quite there. 

Daily Words

No words yesterday, breaking my short streak.

Will have to start again.

Today, did 670 words on "Half Life."

"Half Life"

Starting: 5997
Ending: 6667

Daily Words

Got 1353 words on "Half Life" today. Very productive half hour. Looks like I'll hit close to 7000 on this story, but I'm thinking it'll be 3000-4000 when I'm done. Still, not a bad go. 


Worked on "Half Life" for 30 minutes.

Starting: 4633
Ending: 5997

This gives me an 8-day writing streak. 

Daily Words

Worked on "Half Life." 

Starting wordcount: 3760
Ending wordcount: 4097

337 words written today.

Daily Words

My goal is to try to put words down every day, no matter how few. Today, I got a measly 5 words on "Half Life." Although, I did do another 41 words in notes for another story. 

Okay, so it's a pathetic count, but words went on the page. 

Daily Words

Today got 753 words on "Half Life" in 15 minutes (used the Google Timer). Up to 3755 on this story.

Will probably hit my original prediction of about 5000. Most likely I'll revise it down to 3500. I think that's a good space for this one. So looking forward to revision.

In other news, waiting for any notes or material on my Shotgun Honey acceptance. Pretty excited to be accepted. It's a fun read. I'm a huge fan fiction of 1000 words or less. I like the confines of the space. When you pare a story down to 100-1000 words, you have make some really hard choices and really think about how much you can pack into a single word.

Every noun and verb really has to pull its weight. It's lean. It's snappy (thinking of Tom Hanks in That Thing You Do.)

Daily Words

Good times, bad times. 161 words on "Half Life."

Daily Words

872 words on "Half Life." Aiming to get into a groove of 1000 a day. 

Daily Words

No words on Christmas day. It was busy.

But, today, I did 249 on "Half Life." Getting there. Slowly.

Daily Words

It's Christmas Eve. Got 398 words on "Half Life." This story will probably hit between 3000 and 5000 words by the time it's finished. Then, it will mellow on the shelf until I do a second draft. 

Daily Words

Not a particularly productive day, but 463 words on "Half Life." Of course, it is the holidays. 

I'm not a big fan of of writing a first draft. I'm much more excited about the editing portion. Going through the next drafts is much more interesting to me because that's when the story really starts to look like a story.

I'm sure it's the same with art. 

It's that way with music. The hardest part of a song is getting everyone to learn their parts...it's not until later does the song actually sound like something someone wants to listen to...

Accountability

One of the toughest aspects of writing is accountability. One is only accountable to one's self. For those of us who are externally motivated, this can be a huge challenge. Intellectually, I know that I should be writing daily. It's easy doing the math, but harder to actually complete in pratice.

So, to force some accountability on myself, I'm going to log my word counts as best as I can. 

Today was a light day: 852 words on a story called "Half Life." 

Of course, this included plenty of time downloading games for by boys on their Kindles. So, lots of distractions. 

Better luck tomorrow.