Writer at Large

Total words to date: 18,492
Average words per day: 605 (lowest of the month)

The lower average is chiefly because I missed one day entirely. if it weren't for that, my daily average would have been a much more respectable 705 words per day.

Reaching my goal of 20,000 words this year seems within reasonable reach. It's kind of disappointing after last year's 56,000 words, but 20,000 words is better than 10,000 or 5,000 or none.

Two more days and then it's done for this year . . .

Total words to date: 14,260
Average words per day: 674 (down from last week, but higher than Week 1)

Getting assigned to sit on a jury this week seriously ate into the available writing time this week as evenings were needed to get caught up work missed during the day. That said, I'm pleased that the daily average stayed as high as it did.

The muse has also chosen this week to be particularly stubborn, but I suspect that she's been distracted by other matters. With luck and perseverance, next week should be better.

Total words to date: 9,550
Average words per day: 707 (slightly higher than last week :) )

The muse has been mostly cooperating; it's more been a matter of finding the time to write it down. She's usually been keeping two scenes in reserve, so I haven't had any days this week when I had no idea what to write.

I do need to better develop most of the main characters. Their personal flaws are too internal and too personal, so it's probably difficult for readers to relate to them and equally difficult to have them carry some scenes. I'm not yet sure how to fix it, but the writing will go on.

As of last night, my word count is 4,595 words. For those who are counting, that's a little over 650 words a day. It's a far cry from the needed 1,667 words each days to stay on track, but slightly above the more realistic goal of 500 words per day I had expected.

50,000 words in 2008? Unlikely. 20,000 words? You betcha.

I figure any word count total greater than zero is a good thing.

My goal for the weekend is to write at least 2,000 words. We'll see!

What I'm Listening to Now: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

They're finally getting around to recording unabridged versions of the later books in the Dune series. So far, I have found the reading to be very well done (although I do wonder why it was decided to give the Honored Matres a kind of pseudo-Russian accent).