Thursday, December 22, 2011

A little rudimentary math

I've done the math, and I need to "write"--sometimes start from scratch, sometimes revise, sometimes incorporate research--1000 words a day for the next 24 days to reach my proposal goal by the deadline.

Uh oh.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

... and so it begins

Five days ago, my dear, darling partner and daughter left for the northern hills, to give me time to write.

Let's be honest. I spent the first three days preparing to write, and pretending to write, and reading a lot of blogs that have nothing to do with writing, and reading some blogs that are all about writing, and even reading and taking notes on some sources I really should have consulted long, long ago.

After all of this procrastination--and yes, in my case, it really was procrastination, even though most of it was directly related to my project--I'm sort of stunned to say that it turns out that I do, in fact, possess sitzfleisch once I've run through all other options. The proof: I spent the last two days ... drum roll, please ... writing! I've produced about 1500 words of new work, and it wasn't even all that painful. This means that, if one just forgets about revising for just a moment to let me bask in the glory of actually having done something measurable, I am about 1.5 % of the way to finishing the book.

I have to get one of those tickers that measures work in terms of percent completed.