Update.

Mission accomplished.

Final word count is 91,970 words, which means I wrote 1,362 words tonight. (It's amazing what you can do when you stop pissing and moaning and making up excuses. And by "you", of course, I mean "me". Or rather, "I", if I want to be a grammar-Nazi about it. And, given that this is a writing blog, I kinda do.)

Having done that, I'm hauling my fat arse into bed.

And again, Happy New Year.


-- Cris

Apropos, and by the by...

I just reached 300 pages in Courier New/Times New Roman, 12-point font.

That's pretty cool, and the most I've ever written for one story.

Allow me a second to pat myself on the back...

*

*

*

..aaaaand now it's back to writing.


--Cris

Happy New Year

It's six thirty in the morning, and I'm tired as all getout, but I haven't written anything substantial in days, and I'm beginning to feel like I'm dodging the draft, or something. To alleviate this feeling like there's a hornblower biding his time in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to spring forth and reveal me for the fraud that I am, I'll write a thousand words, and hope it makes me feel better.

The deadline's still Jan. 31st.

It's the new year, and I'd really hate to start it with a big lie. So Jan. 31st is the final deadline. No more extensions. No more excuses. Scamper is done by then, or it won't be, and either way, I'm moving on to something else. The whole point of the deadline was not to finish the book (which would be swell), but to put a finite date in mind, after which I would put all writing on the backburner and focus more on my art. I've been drawing for years longer than I've been writing, but my drawing is still little better than rudimentary.

I don't know if I still want to go to art school (and the art school in New Jersey is a BIG question mark), but I want to be a better artist than I am, and whether I do it on my own or in a school, there has to come a point when I put drawing before writing, and that won't happen if I'm hung up over the last chapter, or that last paragraph, or finding just the right word (there's never a right word. It's a fairy tale. Like Santa Clause. Or Jesus).

Well.

There it is. January 31st.

Put it on your calendars.


--Cris

An update to the last update

As of this this writing, I have 88,888 words, which means I wrote exactly 4400 words today.

That done, I think I'll go take a nap.

An update

My brother got a laptop for Christmas, and with my own computer temporarily out of commission, I've been using it to write for the past several hours.

I wrote more than three thousand words, and several new scenes. They're disjointed and incomplete, and scattered across the timeline, but it's three thousand words, and that ain't not bad.

I'm going to keep going. I have nothing better to do. Not the best mindset to bring to a supposed labor of love, but it's this or watching some rerun on tv. Besides, I haven't written anything substantial in nearly five days, and I'm twelve thousand words behind in my word count. (I was supposed to reach 100K by Christmas. I know it's not technically Christmas yet, but come on.) It used to be fifteen thousand, but then I went and wrote three thousand words in one sitting, so I'm feeling pretty good about that.

Merry Christmas to all.


-- Cris

In a funk

I can't write when I get like this, all blue and down for no reason at all (well, for no good reason). The funk oozes into the writing, permeating it, and when the funk has passed, as it inevitably will, the bad writing will remain. And it's some bad writing, folks. Words cannot express how bad.

The only thing to do is wait for it to pass, and hope it does so before the end of the day. I'll fall behind in my word count, but I can live with that. Unfortunately.


--Cris

Too damn long

I told myself I wouldn't go this long without updating the journal, but then I did. I'm a bad, bad man. :/

In my own defense, I've lost faith in Blogspot's ability to properly log my posts. The last time I tried, I spent some forty-five minutes of my life writing a post, and when I went to publish, it didn't show up, nor did it show up in my Drafts, though they supposedly "autosave" every few minutes. That post is gone, and so are those lost minutes. :(


In any case, a progress report is long overdue.

I've reached nearly 90K words in Scamper. I think this is more than halfway to the end (though there's still some debate as to just where the end is. 125K? 150? I don't bleeding know), but there's still plenty of work left ahead of me. More so than can be done in a couple of weeks, so I'm pushing the deadline back by one month.

Jan 31st. Plenty of time. (Of course, I said the same of December 31st, but that's neither here nor there).

The story's beginning to gain some definition. This is good news; previously, the whole thing was just a nebulous construct in my mind, lacking any real definition as to where it would begin and end, the major events, the climax, and so on. I'd write a scene or a chapter without any real idea of where to put it, but now, the ideas are forming. Like I said, it's still a long road to travel, but at least I have some idea of where it's going to end.


--Cris