That Was A Close One

The night before Easter meant that I had certain responsibilities to attend to. Taking care of those almost caused me to completely forget to write.

At ten thirty, Rish sent me this text:

Each night this past week, I've been texting him my word total when I finish writing, but I hadn't yet this evening. His text had a period at the end, not a question mark. I'm not sure if he was reporting issues that he was having to me, or questioning me as to my progress, but accidentally used a period instead of a question mark. He's pretty precise with language, however, even in texts. He is a writer after all. He doesn't do bullshit like using a letter U to signify the word You. So, I assumed it was his report rather than a question.

It didn't really matter. Either way, he had reminded me that the day was slipping away, and I hadn't written yet...like a chump, I was about to blow it. I texted him back:

I finished up my preparations for the next day, and sat down at the computer. At first, I wasn't really feeling it. I was planning on just getting my 500 words and giving up the minute I passed them. It didn't work that way though. I think that's the brilliance of the 500 word goal. It forces you to write enough that you get into the story, and often you put in way more words than you expected to. By the time I was done, I had 1262 words--1264 if you count The End.

That's right, I am done with "The Christmas Creature." And, as of now, I am really happy with how it turned out. I'm sure that later I'll go back and read through it and realize that it is actually complete shit. But for now, I'm going to bask in the joy of finishing something that I feel I can be proud of.

The story finished up at 14011 words. Quite a story in the end. Just a thousand shy of landing in the novella category. It'll have to satisfy itself with being a novelette instead. Considering that I was expecting to write something that would clock in under 5000 words...well, I don't know. Is it good that it was long? Is it bad? Personally, I don't care. As long as it is good. That's what matters to me. In this day and age of everything being digital, it will probably never matter how long the story is. Nobody is going to insist that I shorten it to save them money on printing costs. Hell, I may expand it a little bit still, to try and emphasize the Christmas setting a little more.

Anyhow, here's my chart for the month so far:

Not sure if I like being done with the story though. Now I gotta figure out what I'm going to write tomorrow.