Rolled out early, a few minutes after 1. One of my sons dropped by on his way from California to New Mexico (return trip). We visited for an hour or so before I went to bed. He was up and back on the road at around 3. Enjoyed seeing him but any visit messes up the routine a bit.
I was going to walk later this morning, but I’m not feeling well. Nothing serious. Just blah. Sometimes I have a day that just feels like a do-nothing day. This might be one of those. Then again, I never know how it will turn out if I just put my fingers on the keyboard.
It’s now a few hours later. Very odd day with the writing. I write a little, go do something else. Write a little more, go do something else. Whatever I accomplish today will be done in increments of 15 minutes to a half hour.
The story’s going fairly well, flowing and all that, but weird. Something’s wrong. That quiet little creative voice in the back of my mind is telling me so. Hmm. I think maybe that’s why everything’s coming in bits and starts this morning.
Well, until that little voice lets me in on the secret, guess I’ll just keep at it. (grin)
Ah! I figured it out. I had heard of this, but I’d never had it happen to me, at least that I can remember. I was writing two stories at one time.
The story about “Norval Babineaux” is going to be a short story or maybe a novella at most. But at about 5,000 words in, the characters in that story handed me another story that’s going to be a novel, only they aren’t in it. How weird is that?
When I’d written around a thousand words today, the separation between the short story and the novel suddenly became apparent. So I cut the short story out of the novel and adjusted the total for the novel.
That’s reflected in the numbers below.
It was fairly easy to separate the two because once the larger story took off (on the third day) all but 339 words were on the novel. (grin) Man I hate math. Well, math that doesn’t have a dollar sign in front of it. I hope this never happens again.
Okay, so if you’re following this stuff at all, in the chart below, Day 6 for the novel is today. Day 4 for the shorter work will be whenever I work on it again.
Today’s Writing
All my writing today was on the novel. After I separated the smaller story out of the larger one, the writing went a lot faster. I’m pleased. (grin)
Fiction Words: 2600 (on the nose… weirder and weirder)
Writing of “Simon Stark” (SF novel)
Day 1…… 3800 words. Total words to date….. 3800 words
Day 2…… 1516 words. Total words to date….. 5316 words
Day 3…… 2942 words. Total words to date….. 8258 words
Day 4…… 4261 words. Total words to date….. 12519 words
Day 5…… 3039 words. Total words to date….. 15558 words
Day 6…… 2600 words. Total words to date….. 18158 words
Writing of “Norval Babineaux” (short story)
Day 1…… 3405 words. Total words to date….. 3405 words
Day 2…… 1487 words. Total words to date….. 4892 words
Day 3…… 0339 words. Total words to date….. 5231 words
Day 4…… XXXX words. Total words to date….. XXXX words
Total fiction words for the month………… 46797
Total fiction words for the year…………… 511838