Keeping up.

I’m close to 10,000 words as of this morning (9478) with a writing date planned for tonight that should get me to 11,000 at least (crossing fingers) and I’m making all sorts of crazy things up as I go. This morning I finished the tale of a cabin-fevered character, invented a library and a librarian to work in it, and moved three brothers out of the family cabin and onto their own land. I’m nowhere near starting the *main* story yet, however. It’s remarkable how long it takes just to grow your characters up into who you want them to be. It turns out that if I write without thinking too much about it (nitpicking) I can achieve 1300-1500 words per hour. Which is a bit startling to realize. At that rate I could be turning out a novel a year – three months of an hour a day, five days a week is 90,000 words. Given another seven months for editing and rewriting, it’s plausible to come up with enough literature in one’s lifetime to fill a small shelf.

Not that I’m crafting a masterpiece here or anything – but something I hope will have rewrite potential once it’s done. I can’t remember the last time (if ever) I wrote 10-11,000 words in four days, so this exercise has at least been good for that.

They say the first week is exhilirating and the second week is hard so I’m trying to frontload as much as possible on the word count. It would be fabulous is by the end of the weekend I could be close to 20,000 words especially since next weekend I’m going to Victoria for my mother’s birthday and to look at the place Brian and I are thinking of getting married next year (near Sooke, for the family part of things. Vancouver will be the other part of the wedding a month later). I’m pretty sure the writing time there will be severly curtailed.

I’m really enjoying this process at the moment though, and am surprised by how nice it is to turn off the internal editor and just allow things to happen as they may. I’m curious about what’s going to happen next, but I think Frances is about to make an influential friend.
Off now to my paid work, to the talk I am giving Saturday, and a grant request for Resist! which are all on the to-do list for sometime before Friday.