It's all in the numbers

As of this morning I'm 80,886 words away from my 312k goal by November.

I haven't written faithfully as planned. Looking back through the yearly tally, I see too many days marked zero. Those are days where I was bogged down by reality and nonfiction and didn't get to my stories. Fourteen days are marked by 1000 - my sign off for editing days.

Honestly, I thought it was worse.

Doing a rough count of the stories I know I've worked on I've written 144k in novels since November. The rest was editing, short stories, flash fiction, and other scraps that filled the days I couldn't wrap my brain along a story line.

In the past eight months I've seen improvements in my writing. I think I might finally be done with the training novels.

I'm not done with Twisted Metal. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. In this case the enemy was Summer Break, a vicious and cruel monster that drains me and forces me to slave away doing summery things. Like going to the pool a few hours a day and washing endless mountains of towels.

I have found a secret, if that's what it can be called. If I can force myself to write 750 words, the rest comes easily. Getting to 500 is a nasty business. It involves pain and suffering and tears of blood to get the first 500 words some days. Between 500 and 750 there is a magic barrier, once I hit that, I can write for hours. Now if only laundry were so easy...