March 7th – 206,626 words completed.

I just checked back on my spreadsheet, I’ve been working on this piece for nearly three weeks now, and come rain or shine, apart from some interruptions for a newsletter and a couple of small bits for critique groups, I’ve managed to average better than 3,000 words a day, without missing a day. In fact I’ve hit 3,305 words today and stopped to do other things.

I’m getting used to being this productive, but it will soon be time to turn my attention back to editing the first couple of piece’s I worked on. That will add a fourth writing task to the day and I wonder how I will cope, given I can’t put down the publishing work, the studying or rather obviously the new writing as that’s all that counts toward the target. I can’t count the editing, because how do you count the words positively. I expect most of these pieces to shrink under the hand of an editor, especially my own, so in that case, the count would be negative. If I counted the whole word count again, that would duplicate the work. Indeed if I simply edited everything I’ve already written this year, four times, under that system I’d reach my target without doing anything else new.

I guess I’ll just have to add task number four to the daily grind, after all.

Ah well.

March 6th – 203,321 words.

It was a very foggy morning in unsunny Hucknall, so I didn’t feel like going anywhere – and I didn’t. In fact, it’s now after 1pm and it’s still bl**dy foggy. You could almost call it perfect writing weather, especially after I’ve managed 3,024 words today, taking me to the total above.

This has now put me just over 2,000 words ahead of schedule, and closing in on getting 10 days ahead. As I’ve said before I’ll need the slack later in the year, so it’s all good. This w.i.p. flipped past the 60k point too, and I’ve just completed the “black moment” scene, so it’s building nicely toward the climax and resolution.

Critique group was good last night, I took my steampunk piece to it, and the comments were very interesting, although one was a little frustrating – she wanted “more” Victorian High Camp” in the early part of the piece – something I’d stripped out of it following the comments from my other critique group. Just goes to show that you need to treat critique points with respect, but always remember they are opinions rather than anything else.

5th March – Reached the two hundred thousand word milestone.

Today I actually made it – hit 200,297 words in total, so I am now officially 20% of the way toward my million word target. It feels good. It’s not eleven thirty yet, but I’ve got to stop – I’ve got a critique group later today and need to prepare for it. On top of that we need to get some baking prep done as we’ve expecting our daughter and granddaughters to visit tomorrow, so we’ll need biscuits for the occasion. Not sure of the flavours yet, but we’ll see – I have got some nice cherries I can chop up, and they’ll provide some colour too. Along with the white chocolate chip for sweetness and taste I think they’ll work.

This w.i.p., just to return to writing for a moment, is going well, my length estimate keeps growing, I had intended for it to be a 50-60k work but I’m now past 57k and nowhere near the climax of the novel. Ah well, all in a day’s work, I guess. I wonder how much will get cut at the edit stage? If it does, does that count as cheating, even though it’s not deliberate?

March 4th – 197,545 words.

Well another day down, another 3,000 and odd words (3,227 to be precise) written and it’s still daylight, so I’m well within my comfort zone, writing wise. I need to spend a lot more time doing other things today, so I’ve had to stop, although I didn’t want to. The scene is building tension nicely and I want to finish it. The problem is, this scene is the crux of the entire book, not the climax, the crux of the story and it’s actually going to take a long time to unfold it. In a sense the last 54,000 words have been building up to the moment I’ll be writing tomorrow, and from there although in plot terms it will build to a climax about 15,000 words later, in character terms, this is the heroine’s defining moment.

In other news, I did not, as originally planned, by dried pineapple today. I could not believe the price they wanted for it. I need to find another source, and I can think of a couple, but neither are in our town so that’ll have to wait for another day. On the other hand, the biscuits seem to have gone down a storm with the family, so since we’re expecting to see the grandkiddies on Wednesday, and it is a grandparent’s solemn duty to spoil them rotten, we’ll have to make another batch fresh, just for them. No nuts though, of course, definitely no nuts.

March 3rd. 194,318 words.

Well, today we started the day baking again. Once more, our favourite cheese bread recipe came out, and we made four meal sized loaves. (That’s one standard sized loaf dough, cut into four and shaped into balls. Each of these when baked is just enough for two people to share, and you never leave a cut edge in the bread bin to dry out and go stale.)

At the same time we baked another batch of biscuits, fruit and white chocolate chip this time. If anything these are even better than the previous batch – but I think we chopped the brazil nuts too fine with that first batch, so we’ll try those again on another occasion. Do need to look out for some dried pineapple pieces in the supermarket tomorrow – the recipe in the book was for coconut and dried pineapple, which, as we didn’t have any, is why we substituted the chopped brazils. Note, we’re canny shoppers, you know – we brought broken brazils rather than whole ones – knowing they would be chopped – about half the price.

Anyway on the writing front, I passed 3,000 words today, so by Tuesday I should be north of 200k and more than 20% of the way toward my target, almost 9 days ahead of schedule, all good.

My arm is also playing up a lot less today, all that physio and all those pain killers have paid off, as I write I haven’t had any pins and needles for over 48 hours, and no real pain to speak of either. Still too soon to leave off either the physio or the meds, but definitely an improvement. Yeay for me.

March 2nd – 191,159 words so far.

Well, I breached the 190k mark and kept going until I passed the daily target. It wasn’t a bad writing day, just split by the need to go and do some shopping. Next weekend is Mothering Sunday, so that means two presents to buy with Marion for our respective mothers – at least I can get away with sneaking out in the week to buy a present for her – after all she is the mother of my children.

Mission accomplished we got home in time for lunch, yet more delicious home baked cheese bread, and then time to write again.

In fact, in a three quarter hour period before we went out, I managed to get a complete 1,000 word conversation written, which was good going, and in a way I resented breaking off and leaving it for a few hours, but when I picked it up again, everything was fine.

So it’s just gone 3 o’clock and it’s time to take the writing hat off and put the studying hat on. Ah well, no rest as they say, for wither the virtuous or the wicked. I’ll leave you to decide which category I fit in, whether my wings will be white lace or black leather. Don’t let the horns on my forehead fool you, they’re just for show.

March 1st – One hundred and eighty eight thousand, two hundred and nine words.

Wow. What a total for just two months work. All I have to do is keep this rate up and I'll hit the target sometime in late November. I’m slightly slower today than yesterday but I do have an excuse – we spend an hour trying out a new recipe today for some coconut and Brazil nut cookies. We made the dough last night and chilled it in  the fridge overnight. All I can say is they are delicious, and I’m glad I’m upstairs because it means they’re out of reach. In fact I’m going to stop talking about them because then I’ll stop thinking about, and wanting, them.

Today was newsletter day, time to get that monthly epistle written, so the first part of the morning encompassed writing about Amazon and the dangers of over-focussing on one retail market, and then it was back to the work in progress. This piece is now north of 45k and building nicely toward a climax. I suspect though this will be a minor climax (the black moment) rather than the real climax to the book. I think I’m about 40k from the actual climax, so this book may be a monster! We’ll see.