Word count, May 2

Got back to the story for the first time since before Pascha. It was OK to skip Holy Friday, Holy Saturday and Pascha, but Monday through Thursday of Bright Week? I had a lot of other stuff to do, but also, it's resistance against this painfully shitty first draft.

So I sat in my coffee shop and got just over 500 words and gave up. On the way home, I gave myself a stern talking-to about the fact that the Robert Penn Warren paragraph I posted earlier today was certainly not a first draft and that you can't get to a paragraph like that without a first draft. That was one thing.

The other was that -- as I despairingly notice that I seem to keep coming back again and again to the same set of fictional "facts" -- they are relevant again and again in the story. Instead of thinking that it means I need to find the final resting place for them, before I know all the alternatives, I need to realize that it means they're important, and each time they come up, I learn something new about the character's backstory.

With those two bits of advice, I came home and finished off the word count to 1,035. And the latter observation turned out to be true. I now know that my protagonist will have to make a journey to visit her ex-husband, to Las Vegas perhaps, but maybe someplace else. I don't know for sure where or when.

So I'm back at it again. My preliminary plot planning is making the writing possible, but not much easier. But possible.

Word count, April 23

Word count Tuesday, zero, zip, zingo. Bad me!

Word count Wednesday, 1,000, bringing the book total to 14, 400. The added words were all in the same scene where the story went its own way Monday, and now I've "discovered" that my characters are distant relatives of characters in another book I'm working on. This is either a fictionally appropriate and literarily fun thing that will enrich both stories or a complete, dead-end rabbit trail. I think it may be the former; I feel it's likely the latter. I'll fix it later? Or I'll dump it all in disgust?

Word count, April 21

Word count as of Monday, April 21 -- 1,000 for the day, and 13,400 for the project. I took Sunday off, and I think a day off once a week will do me good.

It was a hard thousand words, and I almost quit for the day after 500. The story took off on its own, and my protagonist took an action I expected to happen after the halfway mark. I think I'll give it its head for the time being and see where it goes. I can always add more to Act IIA or shuffle the scenes around, if this gut-level impulse turns out to be a rabbit trail.

Word count, April 19

Word count as of Saturday, April 19 -- 1,125 for the day, and 12,300 for the project. I haven't made up my recent slackery, but progress continues.

A police interview gave an opportunity for backstory, but I haven't made nearly the deft use of it that Robert Penn Warren did. Still, as I keep reminding myself, I am exploring the territory; I am exploring the territory.

Weather symbolism entered, a placeholder, I hope, for something better, which I'll fix later.

Word count, April 18

Word count as of Friday, April 18 -- only 650 for the day, but past 11,000 for the project.

Very bad writing, which is still better than no writing. My protagonist crossed the threshold into the special world.

I need to know a lot more about murder prosecution. I've got to do some field trips to the Oregon Supreme Court to see murder trial transcripts and I need to pay a visit to the Office Indigent Defense, who are the state's public defenders.

Word count, progress update

At Christopher Vogler's workshop last weekend, he told about how he strengthened his resolve to finish his book, The Writer's Journey. It helped him, he said, to make the announcement outward -- to tell family and friends that he had decided to complete it -- and to make the announcement inward.

He compared the latter to shouting down a deep well in the center of himself, "I'm going to finish this book." He said that there are segments of the well that are out of alignment -- they are the places where we know why we don't want to, where we see what outcomes we fear, and so we don't necessarily get the message all along the well without some effort.

I've been working on my present project since last September. I've been futzing with the plot, mapping the second act so that I can get through the swamp, and I think I've reached a point where I can start the process of making a road through the journey.

I had written most of the first act -- the Ordinary World -- when I realized I needed to do some reworking, and I haven't been a complete slacker, only a partial one, and arguably going more or less along with it, though I might go a few days or even a week at times before getting back to it.

But I've decided to dive into that well. I've got 10K words written (counting what I've done this week), and if I write a thousand words a day, I should have a solid first draft in less than 90 days. A thousand words a day of first draft takes only about an hour or an hour and a half, because it require me to put my editor brain to sleep in the backseat and just write, write, write.

So I want to post progress reports on my mainstream women's fiction, to help me say accountable to myself and the world.

Monday -- 1,056 words
Tuesday -- 1,034 words
Wednesday -- 968 words
Thursday -- 150 words (I had work and stuff and didn't get to write until I was too tired to write)
Friday -- now has a 2,000-word goal.