Weekly Writing Report

It seems I’ve fallen behind on wordcount reports again. Indeed, I’ve had to do a little reconstruction to get all the numbers as close to what I think they were, but here goes:

• Thursday December 9 – 1,067 words
• Friday December 10 – 912 words
• Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 – no words
• Monday December 13 – 769 words
• Tuesday December 14 – 1236 words
• Wednesday December 15 – 1120 words

Today the novel total stands at 8707 words. In order to submit something for Viable Paradise in January (and I’m hoping to have something to send by mid-January, not by the first), I will need 10,000 words and an outline. I have a vague outline now (I should probably write it down) but what I have found with outlines is that unless they are extraordinarily fuzzy, when I get to the writing of the scene I’ve laid out, the results often change in ways I didn’t anticipate. It would be nice to have fifteen or twenty thousand words, so I can choose the best ten thousand, but I don’t know how likely that is. Still, I have a good feel for who the main characters are now and the story is slowly gaining momentum. Kurt read the first 6000 words over the weekend and says it’s solid and interesting, but has qualms about its marketability. I can’t not write it now, though, so even if it’s a sit in a drawer manuscript instead of a submission manuscript, I have to carry on through to the end of the thing. If I write on my desired pace of about one thousand words a day, then I will get to ten thousand words by Friday, which is the last day that Sophia is in school for the semester. That will be good, because probably very little writing will get done with her in the house for two weeks, not to mention upcoming houseguest, christmas, and all the other things that will be happening in the next few days.

Note to self : escape colon w does nothing in a browser window.