STS-8 Dare: Day 25 (plotting and checking the calendar)

Geez. Like, um, what day is it?

Early Morning Session

Doing a bit of pseudo live blogging this one, let me note that I have been working in roughly three chunks of time each day. There’s the Early Morning Session (where I often do low-grade work that is achievable while a cat lays on my lap). There’s the Late Morning Session (where I lock said cat out of my office and then tend to create a lot of my words). And there’s the Afternoon Session (where I either create words or do publisher stuff). Sometimes there’s also a Late Night Session where I do semi-mindless tasks that can be done while vegging in front of the TV.

I noted yesterday that the book was mostly behaving, which was and is true. That said, I’de been feeling a little drift in the past few days, so I used the first hour and a half segment of my writing day to essentially go through and iron out the wrinkles that had been forming. I split a few things up, and moved a bit around. I think it all plays again.

In the process, I took a look at my writing plan and it suddenly struck me that there are 31 days in March. Yes. Amazing, right?

Look. Let’s be fair. The plan has always said there were 31 days in March. But my brain has been so dialed in on progress that for whatever reason I’d decided that there were only 28 days in the month. So I’ve been working to get all my stuff done in that time period. Heh! Surprise!

I had been thinking the first draft of this book would come to an end in early April. But with this chronal discovery, and with the ironing out of the plot, all combined with the fact that this is a moderately short novel, there’s a not unreasonable reason to think I can get the core work of the entire first draft done by the end of the month. It will desperately need another pass to flesh things out, of course. But that’s what April is for anyway.

So, anyway. That was my early morning session.

The replotting says I added 200 words to the whole thing—but really those are just placeholder overviews that will need to be completely blown out.

The Late Morning Session

Not great, not bad. With all the reshuffling, I started on a chapter I thought was going to be “easy,” but realized an hour in that I’d gone too generic. This manifested itself by me leaving to take a break and thinking “I don’t really like that. I need something snappy.”

So I went back and forced myself to more fully occupy the character of the moment. Thirty minutes later I had that something snappy.

Or at least snappier. [brin]

Total new word count on the day stands at about 1,200. So that’s good.

Afternoon Session

Finished the “easy” chapter, and then decided that (1) it needed to be earlier in the book, and (2) it needed a sister chapter in the place I originally had this one. So I made the move, and wrote the new chapter.

Overall, I’m starting to like the feel of pace to this one, which I’m taking as a sign I’m on the right track.

I’m at 1,650 new words on the story today (in addition to all the plotting and reshuffling), and I admit I’d really like to get to 2K simply for the ego boost of it all. But my brain is getting sluggish, so it’s time for a break. We’ll see if I come back to it later or not.

Either way is good. I’m getting on a roll.

Other notes of interest:

• This week’s count of total new words crosse the 11,000 mark. There’s one day to go, but it already represents the “most productive” week of the year so far, which is good.
• Some of that progress has to do with simply spending time in the seat, but I’ve got another “hours spent’ metric that shows I can’t attribute it all to seat time.
• So I think part of the increase is also attributable to the idea that I’m riding the wave of the story. It’s mostly come to me at this point, so my main goal is to simply get my brain out of the way at times and let things come as they come.

Total Dare Word Count Now: 26,850
Total Book: 29,100 words

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