The Day
Rolled out about 3 (yay, slept in). Checked emails and other things.
Started today by writing a nuts and bolts post on dialogue for the Pro Writers series that posts every ten days. Guess I’ll be running through my core seminars again (briefly) in the next several posts over there.
Had a good walk today. Planned to hit about 6 miles and wound up with 7.5.
I was planning to take most of today to finish finding parts I need for that used shell I bought for my pickup, but I decided to write all day today (wife’s a work) and tomorrow. I’ll plan to take Saturday to do all that other stuff. Not that I won’t write Saturday, but writing will slip to Priority 2.
Just a normal non-writer day, really. Laundry, and a lot of other stuff. Normal stuff. Bland, boring normal stuff. I need to go camping again.
Anyway, then I finished off the day listening to The Four Tops sing “Baby, I Need Your Lovin'” (remember that?) and Aerosmith’s “Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” and then Garth Brooks’ version of “It Don’t Matter to the Sun.” Why? No idea. Except I like perfection. Especially beautiful, emotional perfection. Up there with “Annie’s Song” by Denver or Lonestar’s “Amazed.” Whew.
Topic of the Night: Keeping Track of You
I was browsing back through EARLY installments of this journal for possible topics to update and share (Yes, I canibalize my own work) when it struck me how far I’ve come as a write in only nine months. Seems very gestational, doesn’t it? (grin)
I started writing a short story each week way back in April, but I started Writing Seriously (novels, novellas and nonfiction plus the story of the week) last October. So for any realistic measurement I’ve been a real writer for only about nine months.
One of those entries was about a short story I wrote. I never dreamed I’d write a western, and it was a western. And toward the end of it, the characters told me they’d been buddies for a long time before they were enemies. They told me where everything started, and they asked me to write the story.
It became a novel called Leaving Amarillo. And then there was another one. Then another. Now I’m working on Book 8 in that saga.
And when I started, I wasn’t sure whether it would be a novel or just a novella. Even Dean Wesley Smith told me to be careful about setting a firm date to have it out.
But the point here is how wonderful it is to glance back over those entries since October 19, 2014 and see how much things (especially my perceptions) have changed. It’s nothing short of incredible.
So I encourage you to carve a little time out of your day each day to make a few notes on a journal. You can do it like I do this one, complete with a daily, monthly and yearly word count, or whatever. I guarantee you’ll enjoy looking back over it a few months down the line.
Today’s Writing
I wrote a little bit on Book 8 of the Wes Crowley saga, but I’m not gonna count it as a writing day. I got a lot of writing done, but very little fiction.
I wrote three blog posts for the “main” blog (Pro Writers category) and scheduled them. I’ll be on a modified vacation from July 25 through August 5 and don’t want to have to depend on OPI (Other People’s Internet). Opi is not a good boy. When everything else is clicking along famously, Opi will screw you every time.
Also went through and prepped (very lightly rewrote, heavily reparagraphed) three more stories from Gervasio for stories of the week and got those pre-posted as well. Incredible how L O N G some of my paragraphs were back when I originally wrote those. Ugh. They read much better now. The poetry and humor is still there, but at a lot better pace.
Fiction words: XXXX
Writing of Book 8 in the Wes Crowley saga
Day 1…… 4125 words. Total words to date…… 4125
Day 2…… 2624 words. Total words to date…… 6749
Day 3…… 2766 words. Total words to date…… 9515
Day 4…… 1412 words. Total words to date…… 10927
Day 5…… 3441 words. Total words to date…… 14368
Day 6…… 1052 words. Total words to date…… 15420
Day 7…… 2486 words. Total words to date…… 17906
Day 8…… 3201 words. Total words to date…… 21107
Day 9…… 3186 words. Total words to date…… 24293
Day 10… 1585 words. Total words to date…… 25878
Day 11… 2178 words. Total words to date…… 28056
Day 12… 1730 words. Total words to date…… 29786
Day 13… 1083 words. Total words to date…… 30869
Day 14… 1784 words. Total words to date…… 32653
Day 15… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX
Total fiction words for the month…………… 23387
Total fiction words for the year……………… 429070