Sunday, March 12, 2017
Day 11 Of March
Wow, super crappy day of writing today. I had a really bad headache the
whole time, and just couldn't get any kind of flow to build. But I
struggled through and managed 1,056 words. So, I'm still going.
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Day 10 Of March
It's 1:00 AM again, and I'm just finishing with my words for the day. I need to stop staying up so late to write, but I don't know how to go about it. My wife wanted to stay up late and watch a movie together this evening. She usually sleeps early, so I wasn't expecting it, but I wasn't upset to have it happen. I figured she'd probably fall asleep before the movie went very far, but she didn't, surprisingly.
We watched Boyhood, which was pretty long (like fifteen years long, amiright?). The movie didn't end until 11:45 PM. So, then my wife went to bed, and I had to say, "No, I'm not going to bed with you, I've got to go write now."
Sucked, but I still did it. I could have told her no to the movie, but I refuse. I want to be able to live my life and write as well. A few weeks ago, I saw a comic strip by Zen Pencils posted on Facebook. It was an illustrated version of a few paragraphs from Stephen King's On Writing book if I remember right. It's called The Desk, and it talks about the importance of art being a support system for life and not vice versa.
When I first saw it a few weeks ago, I thought it didn't really apply to me. But only a few days later, and I already see how it works. If my wife wants to spend time together, then I'm going to do it. I can write later if I have to. Hell, tomorrow's Saturday. I can sleep in if I need to.
So, after the movie, I sat down, and spent an hour or so writing another 1,104 words. Kept with my goal, and had a nice time with my wife. I think this evening couldn't have gone better...except if I'd had time to get that Dunesteef episode posted. That's been waiting a little too long. Hopefully I can get it tomorrow morning.
Here's the daily chart:
We watched Boyhood, which was pretty long (like fifteen years long, amiright?). The movie didn't end until 11:45 PM. So, then my wife went to bed, and I had to say, "No, I'm not going to bed with you, I've got to go write now."
Sucked, but I still did it. I could have told her no to the movie, but I refuse. I want to be able to live my life and write as well. A few weeks ago, I saw a comic strip by Zen Pencils posted on Facebook. It was an illustrated version of a few paragraphs from Stephen King's On Writing book if I remember right. It's called The Desk, and it talks about the importance of art being a support system for life and not vice versa.
When I first saw it a few weeks ago, I thought it didn't really apply to me. But only a few days later, and I already see how it works. If my wife wants to spend time together, then I'm going to do it. I can write later if I have to. Hell, tomorrow's Saturday. I can sleep in if I need to.
So, after the movie, I sat down, and spent an hour or so writing another 1,104 words. Kept with my goal, and had a nice time with my wife. I think this evening couldn't have gone better...except if I'd had time to get that Dunesteef episode posted. That's been waiting a little too long. Hopefully I can get it tomorrow morning.
Here's the daily chart:
Friday, March 10, 2017
Day 9 Of March
I was really feeling down for some reason when I first sat down to write this evening. I knew it was time, but I couldn't bring myself to get started. I was saved, when a friend of mine who moved away to California called me up.
Talking to him pulled me out of my funk, and when we hung up, I was able to sit down and write 1,118 words without much trouble. Turned out to be another good day. Still burning my way through Sunny & Gray. It'll probably suck in the end, but I can't let myself worry about that. Just gotta keep plugging on.
This whole process has made me really excited about the possibilities. 1,000 words a day for the whole year means 365,000 words in the year. That's a lot of output. That's as many as six novels for the year! Considering that I've never written a novel in my life yet, it seems like a pie in the sky.
But I think I might be able to keep this going for that long. I might not be perfect for the whole year, but considering that I get a few hundred extra words each day, those will quickly add up to cancel out the missed days. I've written more than 10,000 words in only nine days. I'll probably finish this month with more than 35,000 as long as I don't blow it.
365,000 words. That just blows my mind. Dean Wesley Smith wasn't kidding when he said how easy it was for it to add up, and how he didn't want to hear the friggin' excuses from the crapheads like me who couldn't be asked to put fifteen or thirty minutes work to fulfill their life's dream.
It's been a lot of fun.
Talking to him pulled me out of my funk, and when we hung up, I was able to sit down and write 1,118 words without much trouble. Turned out to be another good day. Still burning my way through Sunny & Gray. It'll probably suck in the end, but I can't let myself worry about that. Just gotta keep plugging on.
This whole process has made me really excited about the possibilities. 1,000 words a day for the whole year means 365,000 words in the year. That's a lot of output. That's as many as six novels for the year! Considering that I've never written a novel in my life yet, it seems like a pie in the sky.
But I think I might be able to keep this going for that long. I might not be perfect for the whole year, but considering that I get a few hundred extra words each day, those will quickly add up to cancel out the missed days. I've written more than 10,000 words in only nine days. I'll probably finish this month with more than 35,000 as long as I don't blow it.
365,000 words. That just blows my mind. Dean Wesley Smith wasn't kidding when he said how easy it was for it to add up, and how he didn't want to hear the friggin' excuses from the crapheads like me who couldn't be asked to put fifteen or thirty minutes work to fulfill their life's dream.
It's been a lot of fun.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Day 8 Of March
Today, I tried my best to keep from needing to stay up late. I'm not sure why. I should have known better.
I wrote on my lunch break at work, and managed to get 450 words or so. That seemed like it would be a really positive development. But, my wife had a very important honey-do for me when I got home.
Our mailbox had been blown off its post in the windstorm we had a few days before. We'd gone several days without one, and I guess they gave her a notice saying that our mail was being held for us at the post office. The post office isn't close to us, and wouldn't be a simple errand to pick the stuff up. So, she wanted me to get the mailbox remounted tonight.
It wasn't really that hard, but I managed to make a few stupid errors (like leaving my wallet home when I went to the hardware store for a new mounting bracket) that made it take a lot longer than it should have.
On top of that, I didn't get any of the laundry done this weekend like I'm supposed to, and everyone was complaining that they had no clothes. I had to get things started at least, so people had stuff to wear tomorrow.
So, there goes my night. Even with a head start, I didn't finish my writing until midnight.
On the plus side, though, I wrote a record number of words for the year. Today's tally was 1,581, which beats my record from February of 1,573 by eight words. This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: huge success! It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
So, I'm at 9,595 on the month. Just barely shy of half of my total for last month. That's pretty awesome, right?
And, I finished chapter eight of Sunny & Gray, putting me at 34,288 words. That's a lot of words. I don't know if I've ever written anything so long. I think there's only one possible story that might be longer. Hold on, I'm going to go check...oh, jeez, not even close. "Do Over" is 26,000 words. So, Sunny & Gray is now easily the longest thing I've ever written. That's pretty exciting. And it's still got a really, really long way to go. I probably won't finish it at this rate until June.
I wrote on my lunch break at work, and managed to get 450 words or so. That seemed like it would be a really positive development. But, my wife had a very important honey-do for me when I got home.
Our mailbox had been blown off its post in the windstorm we had a few days before. We'd gone several days without one, and I guess they gave her a notice saying that our mail was being held for us at the post office. The post office isn't close to us, and wouldn't be a simple errand to pick the stuff up. So, she wanted me to get the mailbox remounted tonight.
It wasn't really that hard, but I managed to make a few stupid errors (like leaving my wallet home when I went to the hardware store for a new mounting bracket) that made it take a lot longer than it should have.
On top of that, I didn't get any of the laundry done this weekend like I'm supposed to, and everyone was complaining that they had no clothes. I had to get things started at least, so people had stuff to wear tomorrow.
So, there goes my night. Even with a head start, I didn't finish my writing until midnight.
On the plus side, though, I wrote a record number of words for the year. Today's tally was 1,581, which beats my record from February of 1,573 by eight words. This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: huge success! It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
So, I'm at 9,595 on the month. Just barely shy of half of my total for last month. That's pretty awesome, right?
And, I finished chapter eight of Sunny & Gray, putting me at 34,288 words. That's a lot of words. I don't know if I've ever written anything so long. I think there's only one possible story that might be longer. Hold on, I'm going to go check...oh, jeez, not even close. "Do Over" is 26,000 words. So, Sunny & Gray is now easily the longest thing I've ever written. That's pretty exciting. And it's still got a really, really long way to go. I probably won't finish it at this rate until June.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Day 7 Of March
I wanted to get to be early, to make up for my late night last night. Didn't happen though. I was too easily distracted today. I kept going off to look at Facebook, or to search for other interesting things, like this word cloud:
So, word clouds are things that take the words you write the most in a document, and arrange them by size. This is made from the words written so far in Sunny & Gray. I spent a lot of time messing with that to make it look like I wanted. Browsing the possible shapes it could be. I wish there could have been a fairy or at least a dragonfly, but a butterfly was the closest I could get. That was a lot of time not writing.
I should be asleep already. I need to find a way to get up early in the morning to write instead of staying up really late. The late night thing just doesn't work well with my daily schedule.
Anyway, despite all the screwing around, I finally wrote my 1,000 words. 1,074 to be exact. Here's the chart so far:
So, word clouds are things that take the words you write the most in a document, and arrange them by size. This is made from the words written so far in Sunny & Gray. I spent a lot of time messing with that to make it look like I wanted. Browsing the possible shapes it could be. I wish there could have been a fairy or at least a dragonfly, but a butterfly was the closest I could get. That was a lot of time not writing.
I should be asleep already. I need to find a way to get up early in the morning to write instead of staying up really late. The late night thing just doesn't work well with my daily schedule.
Anyway, despite all the screwing around, I finally wrote my 1,000 words. 1,074 to be exact. Here's the chart so far:
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Day 6 Of March
Last night was nearly the end of my whole adventure of consecutive nights of meeting my goal. I made it all the way through February, and through most of the first week of March, but our plans for the podcast nearly finished that streak off.
I met Rish for our usual get together, with one important misstep. I forgot my wireless keyboard at home. For some reason, I totally forgot about our (now) usual writing session at the bar in Wendy's. I think it was because I knew we would be going to see Logan and expected that maybe we wouldn't have time to write before the show. I don't know. I really have no excuse.
In the end, I probably wouldn't have gotten that much writing done, because we only had about twenty minutes from the time we finished eating to the time that we needed to be at the theater for the start of the film. I did write 61 words using my phone's onscreen keyboard. So, I did do some writing, but it was a far cry from the 1,000 words I was supposed to be hitting.
We left Wendy's and went to the movie, then did an episode of That Gets My Goat afterward to talk about it. Then, instead of hanging out and talking for a while like Rish and I usually do, I rushed off for home. If I was going to keep up my streak, I really needed to get going. That was a bit of a bummer, but also kind of good. It was friggin' cold out, so I might have saved both our lives by making sure we didn't stand around in the parking lot for a long period of time.
I got home at 1:30 AM, and I really didn't want to do the writing thing. 1,000 words takes a while to achieve. I can pump out 500 words relatively quickly, but 1,000? Did I have to? Maybe I could just do 2,000 the next day, and say I actually did them on separate days? Or maybe I could just call the day a wash. I did write, after all. I did 61 words already.
Ugh! Grr! I sat down and started writing. At least I could make an attempt. I wrote and wrote for a while, checking the word count every few minutes. I made it to 500 fairly quickly, and I wished that it was still February and that could mean I was done. I struggled further, and eventually I made it to 1,000. 1,060 to be exact, which means I wrote 999 words after getting home at 1:30 AM.
It sucked, but I did it. That builds character or something, right? I'm really trying to establish the habit of writing every day, so I'm still going with that. I think Stephen King said once that a person is what ever they do every day. A writer writes every day. So, I can still call myself a writer at this point.
Here's my chart:
Still going.
I met Rish for our usual get together, with one important misstep. I forgot my wireless keyboard at home. For some reason, I totally forgot about our (now) usual writing session at the bar in Wendy's. I think it was because I knew we would be going to see Logan and expected that maybe we wouldn't have time to write before the show. I don't know. I really have no excuse.
In the end, I probably wouldn't have gotten that much writing done, because we only had about twenty minutes from the time we finished eating to the time that we needed to be at the theater for the start of the film. I did write 61 words using my phone's onscreen keyboard. So, I did do some writing, but it was a far cry from the 1,000 words I was supposed to be hitting.
We left Wendy's and went to the movie, then did an episode of That Gets My Goat afterward to talk about it. Then, instead of hanging out and talking for a while like Rish and I usually do, I rushed off for home. If I was going to keep up my streak, I really needed to get going. That was a bit of a bummer, but also kind of good. It was friggin' cold out, so I might have saved both our lives by making sure we didn't stand around in the parking lot for a long period of time.
I got home at 1:30 AM, and I really didn't want to do the writing thing. 1,000 words takes a while to achieve. I can pump out 500 words relatively quickly, but 1,000? Did I have to? Maybe I could just do 2,000 the next day, and say I actually did them on separate days? Or maybe I could just call the day a wash. I did write, after all. I did 61 words already.
Ugh! Grr! I sat down and started writing. At least I could make an attempt. I wrote and wrote for a while, checking the word count every few minutes. I made it to 500 fairly quickly, and I wished that it was still February and that could mean I was done. I struggled further, and eventually I made it to 1,000. 1,060 to be exact, which means I wrote 999 words after getting home at 1:30 AM.
It sucked, but I did it. That builds character or something, right? I'm really trying to establish the habit of writing every day, so I'm still going with that. I think Stephen King said once that a person is what ever they do every day. A writer writes every day. So, I can still call myself a writer at this point.
Here's my chart:
Still going.
Monday, March 6, 2017
Anklecast 33: The First Video Anklecast
Okay, February is over, and Big Anklevich is back to report on his performance. Did he or didn't he achieve his goal? Did he or didn't he manage to write 500 words a day for an entire (short) month? And if so, how did that experience change him? What will the future be like?
Also, this Anklecast is a video podcast as well as an audio one. You can watch the video above, or click on this link to see it on YouTube. You can actually find all of the Anklecast episodes, Dunesteef episodes, That Gets My Goat episodes on YouTube if you prefer to consume them in that way. This link will get you to the page.
If you prefer the old fashioned non-video way, here it is. You're probably not missing much. Big Anklevich is not as handsome as he used to be when he was younger.
Right click HERE to download.
Music was "Crossing The Divide." Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com.
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