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Thursday, September 19, 2013

10 Day Novel Challenge: Day 0

Thought I'd go ahead and get into the logging groove. I had a short story I'd been working on I wanted to finish before starting the novel.

Before I dig into my daily routine, allow me to warn those familiar with Dean's hours, that I'm not intentionally mimicking him. It just so happens we both keep similar hours. I suspected as much because I caught him up late a few times, but it wasn't until he started logging his day that I realized I'm not so strange after all...at least to him. But wanted to make it clear I'm not trying to copy-cat Dean. I've had this schedule for many years. Just when I worked a full time job, I didn't get much sleep. Now I have more like a part-time job helping my wife clean houses. Fun! But it does give me more time for writing, so I can't complain. As fate would have it, this next week while I'm doing this novel challenge is going to be busier than usual.  Won't help me put in the 6 hours a day I'll need to get close, but we'll give it my best shot.

Today got out of bed around 12:30. Did my morning gig of eating and catching up on emails and blogs. I have to be careful on blogs. It is too easy for me to spend hours going down comment trails. But I also had a few comments to respond to on Facebook about my announcement, and emails.  Combine that with some personal stuff, and it wasn't until 5:40 I sat down to write.

I'd started a short story for my blog earlier this week that I needed to finish. For the first time I tried Dean's trick. But I don't have a stash of half-titles like he does. So I went to Fox News website and looked at titles there. I landed on one title that was about some balloons, and another about an evacuation. I smashed them together into the title "Balloon Evacuation." I'd written about 1262 words on it before today.  I do tend to write my short stories more "seat of the pants," so had developed a good idea where it was going, but still free wheeling it.

I didn't get very far before wife comes home from work, at about 5:55. In those 15 minutes, I logged another 264 words. Still far from done. So I stop to fix dinner, watch some DS9 while eating, then follow that up with some "Honest Trailers" on YouTube. Spent time with wife in there as well. She goes to bed around 11:45 pm. I go make my hot tea, do the dishes, get my cashews and prunes and head back to my computer to write around 12:30 am.

I take off writing the most exciting part of this story. A few stretch breaks but I write pretty solidly from 12:30 to 5:00 and get in an additional 2464 words before the story's done. Decide I'll save the editing and posting for later. Sleep is calling.

Today I wrote 2731 words of fiction (no, I'm not counting my emails and FB posts). Took me a total of about 4.75 hours. That comes out to an average words per hour of 575. Not too great, thanks to my bad left hand. At that rate, I'll need more than 6 hours a day to clock in around 6K a day. Maybe I can pick it up, but not looking real promising.

So I'm writing this blog, another 575 words in 30 minutes...better. Tomorrow starts the novel. Look for day 1 by Saturday.

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