Count 'em up

I know I’ve been slacking on the posts lately. Mostly the reason is that I’ve been concentrating on other writing. I have set a fairly substantial goal for myself concerning the new story that I am working on. In order to meet the daily requirement, I spend all of my writing time on this story, leaving the blog fairly stagnant. Today, however, I have a little free time at lunch and can share a few words with you kind folks. As for the goal, I am pretty confident that (barring some sort of huge diversion) I will be able to meet it. Pretty simply, the goal is to write 1000 words a day until October 31st. If I am successful in this feat, I will reach 100,000 words by Halloween. 100,000 words is a good size for a first draft of a novel. This will mark my fourth novel (when it is completed) and will summarily be placed on top of the stack of other useless manuscripts. Even though I have very little confidence that this work will make it out into the world, I feel good about writing it. And by feeling good, I’ve been able to energize myself into writing 1000 words every day. So far, here are my daily milestones and how close I was to meeting them:

Date Milestone Actual
7/28 6500 6473
7/29 7500 7728
7/30 8500 7728
7/31 9500 9522
8/1 10500 10984
8/2 11500 10984
8/3 12500 11949
8/4 13500 11949
8/5 14500 14868
8/6 15500 15489

So, after the first 10 days, I am only 11 words off pace. That’s not too bad. Now, to avoid confusion, I will explain that I didn’t begin this whole milestone thing until I was 6000 words into the story. As you can see, I’ve missed a few days and come up short on others, but (overall) I’ve been pretty consistent. I also find that 1000 words is not a tremendously difficult number to reach. Hell, this post has over 300 words in it so far.
Once again, I’m sorry for not posting more often. And I fear that it is a trend that will continue until at least November. But in the end, I’ll have a new book. Maybe the book to break me out of my 10-6 and into the world of fame and fortune. Or at least another pile of paper to place in the writing box in my bedroom.

I think I just came in my pants...

Mark Danielewski has finally written another book. I am thrilled. The experimental, monumental, just plain mental House of Leaves is the best book I have ever read and I cannot wait to see what else Danielewski has to offer. Here is a little teaser from Amazon.com:

Mark Danielewski's first novel "House of Leaves" is a cult-favorite--experimental horror fiction in a gorgeous (and newly remastered) full-color package. His new book "Only Revolutions" takes the experiment 10 steps further in a story about teenage lovers Hailey and Sam: the book is printed on two sides--one side tells the story from Hailey's point of view, flip it over and you get Sam's side (literally). We caught a glimpse inside the mind-bending new novel--take a look for yourself below.





PS: Jack: 52% of the people who visit the site for this book on Amazon end up buying it. 40% end up buying "Satan Burger" by Carlton Mellick III. Thought you'd like to know.

Funny workplace

It is very weird to work in a place where the following meetings take place:

Pokemon review
Harry Potter Halloween Planning
Captain Underpants Meeting
Marvel Comics Online Project
Star Wars meeting