Writing: 2,278 words
I think I just realized that no one else cares about my transcription.
But I think I knew that already, because I never felt compelled to crosspost any of those updates to my Facebook author page. And I don't think I actually expected anyone to care about it, either. The only reason I posted about it at all was out of a desire to make daily updates.
Except that this is meant to be a writing blog, a chronicle of my final push to finish a first draft of this novel. So I'm going to refrain from clogging it up with any more file-times or minutes-per-minutes. I'll be doing that while the work lasts, and writing my original fiction when I can.
Like the last two nights. After transcribing video for two hours each night, I settled in on the loveseat in the living room - I had to temporarily abandon the office when a friend came down from Pennsylvania last week - and wrote. I wrote 1,171 words on Monday night, and another 1,107 words last night, to bring my total manuscript up to 107,743 words. That also banked 278 words over two nights for a balance of 2,278.
More importantly, after a grand total of 23,692 words, Michael has returned to Pennsylvania from New Jersey. Operation Persephone is finally, mercifully done. What I find particularly interesting, though, is that I had once predicted that the Danger of Being Me was a meager 30,000 words from completion.
That prediction included four sequences: the footbridge between the Backstory and the Frontstory, the Operation Persephone sequence, the Gateway Motel sequence, and the high school rooftop sequence. So once again, it seems that I vastly underestimated the amount of story I had yet to write. Because in 32 writing-days over 45 calendar days, I have written 37,413 words, and I have only just now completed the Operation Persephone sequence.
That leaves two "chapters" - the motel sequence and the rooftop sequence - yet to be written. If each one runs about 6,000 words, and I could see that happening very easily, then I'm going to wind up with a first draft of 120,000 words. I don't imagine them running longer than that, but what do I know: I never envisioned the New Jersey sequence turning into a sodding novella all by itself. But if both sequences somehow wind up going as long as Operation Persephone did, I could end up with a first draft of more than 150,000 words.
So at the moment, I'm aiming for between 110,000 and 120,000 words. In the 32 writing-days since I started this grand adventure, I've averaged 1,169 words per day. If I can manage to make the time to produce that average each day for the next eleven days, I'll end up with a finished manuscript just a little longer than 120,000 words, with each of the final two sequences running 6,340 words. Even if I manage just a thousand words a day for the next eleven days, I'll still end up with a first draft just shy of 119,000 words with each of the last two sequences running 5,500 words.
Either way, this whole ordeal could well be done by Saturday, the 8th of October. Not that I'm saying it will be, because that's a fantastic way to guarantee that it doesn't happen. I'm just saying that it could. Incidentally: the Atheist song that I was listening to was "Piece of Time."
But I think I knew that already, because I never felt compelled to crosspost any of those updates to my Facebook author page. And I don't think I actually expected anyone to care about it, either. The only reason I posted about it at all was out of a desire to make daily updates.
Except that this is meant to be a writing blog, a chronicle of my final push to finish a first draft of this novel. So I'm going to refrain from clogging it up with any more file-times or minutes-per-minutes. I'll be doing that while the work lasts, and writing my original fiction when I can.
Like the last two nights. After transcribing video for two hours each night, I settled in on the loveseat in the living room - I had to temporarily abandon the office when a friend came down from Pennsylvania last week - and wrote. I wrote 1,171 words on Monday night, and another 1,107 words last night, to bring my total manuscript up to 107,743 words. That also banked 278 words over two nights for a balance of 2,278.
More importantly, after a grand total of 23,692 words, Michael has returned to Pennsylvania from New Jersey. Operation Persephone is finally, mercifully done. What I find particularly interesting, though, is that I had once predicted that the Danger of Being Me was a meager 30,000 words from completion.
That prediction included four sequences: the footbridge between the Backstory and the Frontstory, the Operation Persephone sequence, the Gateway Motel sequence, and the high school rooftop sequence. So once again, it seems that I vastly underestimated the amount of story I had yet to write. Because in 32 writing-days over 45 calendar days, I have written 37,413 words, and I have only just now completed the Operation Persephone sequence.
That leaves two "chapters" - the motel sequence and the rooftop sequence - yet to be written. If each one runs about 6,000 words, and I could see that happening very easily, then I'm going to wind up with a first draft of 120,000 words. I don't imagine them running longer than that, but what do I know: I never envisioned the New Jersey sequence turning into a sodding novella all by itself. But if both sequences somehow wind up going as long as Operation Persephone did, I could end up with a first draft of more than 150,000 words.
So at the moment, I'm aiming for between 110,000 and 120,000 words. In the 32 writing-days since I started this grand adventure, I've averaged 1,169 words per day. If I can manage to make the time to produce that average each day for the next eleven days, I'll end up with a finished manuscript just a little longer than 120,000 words, with each of the final two sequences running 6,340 words. Even if I manage just a thousand words a day for the next eleven days, I'll still end up with a first draft just shy of 119,000 words with each of the last two sequences running 5,500 words.
Either way, this whole ordeal could well be done by Saturday, the 8th of October. Not that I'm saying it will be, because that's a fantastic way to guarantee that it doesn't happen. I'm just saying that it could. Incidentally: the Atheist song that I was listening to was "Piece of Time."