I'm A Sucker For Pretty Word Counts

I noticed it again tonight. About three minutes before I starter writing this in fact. A pretty word count can just about stop me dead. Take tonight. I've finished work on Gordian Knot v2 for now. Partly because I made my current daily goal, 1000 words, but mostly because I finished at 8844 words.

If I hadn't made 1000 for the day already things might have been different. I can usually keep going when I have to. But every time something pretty greets me when I as for the word count there is a temptation to just stop for a while. To enjoy seeing the pretty count preserved in my daily word count sheet.

Sometimes I think I must be nuts, at times like this I'm sure.

Back To Business

Well call me old-fashioned but I thought I'd get back to the true subject of the blog this time, how's the writing going. Well, technically I'm not sure whether it's writing or editing. I'm calling it editing, but when I compare it with the old version I don't think many sentences escape untouched, and I am retyping everything from scratch. Re-write may be a better description.

Whatever it's called, it's doing quite well. I had a somewhat slow start, I'll grant, but now I'm starting to hit my stride. Yesterday was actually a below average day with some 750 words. Today I made up for it, 1290 to get the average for the past two days back to over 1000. The next section will be more difficult than the one I've almost finished with. I'm dropping in two new sub-plots and probably half a dozen extra characters.

I've had an ache in my upper back the last few days. Fortunately it hasn't interfered with my writing as much as it has with other things. It makes it more difficult to really focus on anything, but writing takes a slightly different form of concentration it seems. Of course changing the way I sit every few minutes does slow things down. Still with 1290 today I can't really complain.

In August A Young Man's Fancy....

... lightly turns to thoughts of November. Yes the first official warning has come, NaNoWriMo will descend upon us again this year. Time for those of us who are insane enough - quite possibly bitten by a few rabid dogs as well as the writing bug - to turn our thoughts to plots and world-building all in preparation for this great event.

The first thoughts are always tentative. I have an official candidate plot/world in mind for this year. I'm actually worried I may be over planning. Last year's world congealed in the final days of October, the plot in the first week of actual writing. That strategy carried me for 104,505 words, more than twice the victory limit of 50k.

Of course I didn't just think up stuff late October last year, so I may be okay. Some of the world-building/concepts that made up Flame Dancer (finished up at 127k January 31st) had been knocking about on my hard-drive or in my mind since 2003 or 2004. And Flame Dancer was a fantasy world, my current candidate, Tech Runners, is science fiction. That means I need more technology worked out before I jump in and start writing, bitter experience has taught me that once already.