Sunday, July 21, 2013

#29 out of 40 — Novel: Day One

Books I picked up this morning:


Nice 5 mile walk to and from dinner; miles achieved for the day.

Day 44 of writing streak. Exciting day on the writing front, which I approached with a little trepidation and much enthusiasm. I'm writing a novel! I created a plot outline and assembled some other prep material over the last month, so I feel in pretty good shape going in. But I've never done this before, and I know it's going to be a ton of work. And many unexpected things will happen, jeopardizing my sanity and--more importantly--the sanity of all those who have to put up with me on a regular basis. My apologies in advance!

Goal is approx +81K words. By comparison, when I wrote "The Last Mandala Sweeps" last year (the sequel to Bob Silverberg's opening novella in When the Blue Shift Comes) it was about 30K. That one (first draft) took me about 30 days. I'm going need to write at a somewhat faster rate now, and for almost three times as long, if I want to be done by the deadline I've set for myself, which is the end of September. With sustained focus and discipline, I know I can hit the target. But there's little tolerance for error.

Anyway, it was exciting to start work on the first chapter today, after having had the story idea floating around in my head for a month. 2,000 words done. This puts me here:

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