Spring came. It didn’t wait until the end of May, it came in April this year, with nice sunny days and many warm one as well. It’s taken a little vacation so its been cooler and a bit damp lately, but not so much its bothersome. Still, all in all it was a very nice month and very productive.
35,149 words was the count for April, an average of 1,172 per day, give or take. The main focus was the new novel about a war between magic and technology. It’s already crested 53,000 words and shows no signs of slowing down, though I’m now into that meaty sloggy pulpy center of a story where it feels like wading through quicksand to get through it. I think the more I work on a particular story, the more I see the flaws within it, the ways of improving it, and that tends to hinder the desire to continue, which makes the writing feel more forced. But, I’ve promised myself I’ll stick to the original vision and get through this first draft (I’m guessing it’ll top 120,000 words when I finish) then put it to bed for a while and return to it fresh with those ideas in hand. Total word count for the year is 136,477, with a daily average of 1128 words (I was shooting for 959). Right now I could take three weeks off and still be slightly ahead of my expected goals. And I also had three days of non-writing the whole month, which compared to the previous two months (7 days not writing in March, 6 days in February) was great.
I also finished one half-done short story about three old adventurers (see previous post on here) and wrote a brand new story called “Ricky Flies.” Call that last one magical realism, about an abused twelve year old who learns he is one of the “flying people”, some sort of weird, feared outgrowth of humanity. I like the story, it has a spark of truth to it, realism, pulling from pieces of my own history to construct the setting, which gives it a nice vibrancy and sense of being real, at least once you disregard this is a boy who can fly. Not that I was ever abused, but certainly I know folks who were and the desire to “run ahead” of the things that have left scars on you.
One more week until my second class of the semester ends and I’ll have the summer free. Got an A in the first class and think I managed a B in this one, though I should have done better. My fault for not paying attention to the instructor’s grading comments on our weekly “response” submissions, I didn’t realize until halfway through the class she had been asking me to give citations for all the quotes I used from the readings. Makes sense of course and was a pefectly reasonably request, but I was marked down the first four weeks for failing to include them, and the fifth week for including them incorrectly. But my first paper was a solid A, and I think I rocked the second as well. Now I have to finish up the final project and turn that in next weekend.
Hopefully I’ll be able to blog more in coming weeks with fewer distractions on my plate.