THE STATS!
Day: 10
WC: 510
Total WC: 4,729
Time: ~25 minutes
Music: None (I had my headphones on too, but I forgot to turn on Spotify)
Thoughts:
I did not want to write today. Not one bit. I wanted to go back to my warm bed at home and sleep. I wanted to head down to Starbucks and get a super sugary drink. I wanted to do so many other things beside write. And then, to try to get myself in the mood, I started filling out novel details in a website called “Plotist” (which is actually a really awesome website that you should check out). Once I started doing that, though, I didn’t want to start actually writing. I wanted to keep filling out things about the book that I’ve nearly finished writing. And then I wanted to work on a different project instead of my main project.
So basically, today was one of those days where I had to force myself to open my novel document and work on it whether or not I felt like doing it. That is what I did, eventually, and once I was going it didn’t take too long to reach the 500 word goal. Although, I did get really fidgety around 411 words, because I wanted to be done writing.
I think there were for two reasons that I didn’t feel like writing. 1. Today was in-between-scene writing. I had a bunch of stuff that my character was doing that I felt like I needed to summarize (even though I’ll probably change a lot in revision if not just cut it completely) and it just wasn’t super interesting to write. I just felt like, personally, I needed to write it so I had a sense of the timeline of the last day of my book, which was enough to justify writing it at all. And 2. I’m almost done writing the ending. I’m probably less than 1,000 words away from putting the last few sentences of the novel down, which is really weird. I know that I still have a ton to do with this draft (I have dangling scenes and characters all over the place), but I feel like once I write the ending, then that’s it. Once Adam drives Vincent to the airport, their stories are effectively done. I’ve been working on various versions on this “first draft” for years (seriously, I started writing about Vincent in my senior year of high school, and I’m currently in my sophomore year of college), and to think that I’ve finally found a good ending spot for Vincent, it’s really weird. And slightly emotional? I’m sure that I’ll form more thoughts/feelings about this in a few days when I finally “finish” the story, but knowing that the ending for my characters is coming is just…. it’s so strange.
Additional Thoughts:
- I really wish that my Starbucks sold London Fogs.
- The literary magazine deadlines are coming up at school, and I still haven’t figured out what pieces I’m going to submit for them.
- My fingers are so cold. I might have to get a cup of tea for the sole purpose of heating them up.
- The website I mentioned earlier (http://www.plotist.com/) is actually super cool. You can put in character descriptions, timelines, settings, and stuff like that. I’m pretty stoked about it. I also heard that it has a feature that tracks your word count, but I haven’t figured out where that is yet. But if you like things to organize your stories, I’d definitely suggest looking into Plotist. It’s a free too, which is great!
- To combat the impending end of my story (even though I’ll probably be spending another year or so editing and revising it at least) I’m really in the mood to start planning another story. Some sort of sci-fi I think? Or maybe a mystery? Maybe a space murder! Imagine that, you’re stuck on a different planet with only 6 other people in your crew. One of them gets murdered. One of them is the murderer, but you don’t know which one. Plus you can’t afford to not trust your crew mates, because you’d probably die. Oh boy. Wouldn’t that be fun? A fusion of Andy Weir and Agatha Christie?
- It’s so hard to find visual representations of your characters. Google images always gives me super attractive people, but my characters are normal looking. They aren’t supposed to look like models.
- Also, Morgan (from morganpbillings) mentioned the 500 February Challenge in her most recent blog post about the effectiveness of word count. It’s a really interesting read, so you should definitely check it out. 🙂
Alright, my fingers are still cold, so I’m going to stop writing and get some tea. I hope you all are having a great day and that words come to you, like seagulls to an unsuspecting plate of french fries.
Happy Writing!
writer's companion 