I'm continuing to study Douglas Adams, both the man himself, his writing, and his thoughts on how he wrote what he did. It's been enlightening, and I've been able to grasp and appreciate him and his work on an entirely different level. It's also helped me from the "creative family tree" point of view to realize that he and I had many things in common, despite being born many years apart and leading lives on different continents.
On Monday, I wrote a journal entry. I also did some work on the Immortality story (resulting in an unidentifiable word count because it was adding items to a list and modifying some of them, so there was a change in word count but not an easily measured one). I wrote three posts of Columbus Beer Scene (1492 total words). That gave me 1,987 words for the day.
On Tuesday, I wrote some more of The Mimas Object story for the ASL Series (1621 words), a post on six-word stories for this blog (152 words), and a journal entry (753 words) which included some ideas for spicing up The Mimas Object story, which is still a little dull to me. I've also continued to read about Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That made the day's total 3,557 words.
Wednesday evening, I wrote a journal entry (531 words), a beer review for Columbus Beer Scene (333 words), and several product reviews for Amazon.com (1038 words). I also wrote 16 opening lines and a few opening paragraphs (451 words). That was a daily total of 2,353 words.
Thursday on my lunch hour, I wrote two posts for the Windows Desktop Administration blog (3749 words total), a journal entry (209 words), and several opening lines (341 words). I also wrote an installment of the ASL Mimas Object story (755 words). That gave me a total for the day of 5,054 words. Since Monday, I've written an average of 3,238 words per day! I also continued reading the Douglas Adams biography.
Friday, also on my lunch hour, I wrote two security related posts for the Windows Desktop Administration blog (1504 words) and a journal entry (1016 words) for a total of 2,520 for the day.
Saturday I was busy most of the day. It was after 11pm before I had the time to sit down and do some actual writing. All I wound up managing was a journal entry (348 words). Lowest per-day total of the week.
Sunday was largely a day of chores and errands, but I did begin gathering notes and writing part of a series of posts which will eventually appear here on this blog, about Douglas Adams and how he worked. Those notes total 4,302 words and are all I managed today apart from this post (468 words).
Of all the weeks I have detailed records for, this is the week with the highest word count! A record!
Here are my notes from this week:
- Meaningful Quotes:
- "[As a comedy writer] You're trying to see things, by shifting some perspective, shifting some variable somewhere, that suddenly makes two things that were apparently completely unalike suddenly appear to be alike... and appear to be alike because in some fundamental way, they are. It's always those moments of sudden, rather startled, recognition that give you particularly good moments in comedy." -- Douglas Adams
- "Writer's Disease: About ninety per cent of your time is wasted on totally pointless and distracting activity, and only about ten per cent is actually spent dreaming up and composing and shaping and honing all those wonderful, exciting, soul-stirring excuses for not having got anything written." -- Douglas Adams
- "You map out a plot, and you write the first scene, and inevitably the first scene isn't funny and you have to do something else, and you finally get the scene to be funny but it's no longer about what it was meant to be about, so you have to jack in the plot you had in mind and do a new one." -- Douglas Adams
- "Nobody could say anything bad about my writing that I haven't already thought ten times worse." -- Douglas Adams
- [Speaking about being practically locked in a room to write against a deadline] "...the strange thing is, under those circumstances you actually come up with all the best stuff. Stuff you couldn't have written any other way." -- Douglas Adams
- "He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom." -- P.G. Wodehouse
- "It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it after all." -- P.G. Wodehouse
- "If you want to succeed, find leaders who are doing amazing things in the world, and push them up. Find powerful people and help them reach their goals. If you’re of service to them, they will be of service back." - Unknown
- What Didn't Happen and What I Can Improve for Next Week:
- Plot outline for The Ark - Not Done
- Continue worldbuilding in the Immortality universe - Not Done
- Finish the Mimas Object story - Partially Done
- Flesh out the "straight" part of the "Technology" story - Not Done
- From all the above, I see that I probably need to force myself to sit down and work on these projects in order to keep momentum going. Otherwise they stall out for weeks at a time and never get finished.
- Biggest Outcomes I Wanted for This 5-day Period:
- Plot outline for The Ark - Not Done
- Continue worldbuilding in the Immortality universe - Not Done
- 20 opening lines, 2 paragraphs, 1 page - Done
- Finish the Mimas Object story - Partially Done
- Flesh out the "straight" part of the "Technology" story - Not Done
- At least one post on this blog - Done
- Biggest Outcomes I Want for the Next 7 Days:
- Finish the Douglas Adams post series
- Finish The Mimas Object story on ASL Series Blog
- 10 Opening Lines, 1 paragraph, 1 page
- Worldbuilding in the Immortality universe
- Brainstorming in the Technology story
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THIS WEEK'S WORD COUNTS
- ASL Series Blog: 3,407 words
- Columbus Beer Scene: 1,825 words
- Windows Desktop Administration Blog: 5,253 words
- Journal: 3,352 words
- Amazon Reviews: 1,038 words
- This Blog: 4,922 words
- Opening Lines: 792 words
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APRIL 2015 WORD COUNTS
Novels:
- Fully Invested: 0 words (notes and backstory)
- The Alliance (series): 0 words
- ASL - The Ark: 0 words
- Alien Love Story: 0 words
- Driven To Kill: 0 words
- Local Gods: 0 words
- The Black Eagles: 0 words
- The Old Hotel: 0 words
- Thief of Police: 0 words
- Immortality Story: 0 words
- Technology Story: 106 words
Short Stories:
- The Mimas Object (a story in the Alliance universe): 0 words
Non-Fiction:
- Introduction to Application Repackaging: 0 words
- Troubleshooting Windows Applications: 0 words
- Amazon Product Reviews: 0 words
Blogging and Journaling:
- Alliance for Sentient Lifeforms (ASL): 4,083 words
- Begin Brewing: 0 words
- Columbus Beer Scene: 1,825 words
- How to Write Fiction: 1,244 words
- Introduction to Application Repackaging: 0 words
- Windows Desktop Administration: 5,253 words
- This Blog: 5,388 words
- Guest Posts for Other Blogs: 0 words
- Comments on Other Blogs: 1,038 words
- Journaling: 6,413 words
Opening Lines, Paragraphs, Pages:
- Opening Lines Written: 24 lines (792 words)
- Opening Paragraphs Written: 10
- Opening Pages Written: 1
APRIL 2015 - TOTAL WORDS: 26,142 (avg. 2,010.9 per day)
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CHALLENGE - YEAR TO DATE RESULTS:
Record Word Counts:
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CHALLENGE - YEAR TO DATE RESULTS:
Record Word Counts:
- Day: 8,693 (March 29, 2015)
- Week: 20,589 (April 6-13, 2015)
- Month: 56,486 (March 2015)
| Month of Challenge |
Words Written
|
Days
|
Words/Day
|
| December 2014 | 20,754 | 31 | 669.5 |
| January 2015 | 16,018 | 31 | 516.7 |
| February 2015 | 47,660 | 28 | 1702.1 |
| March 2015 | 56,486 | 31 | 1822.1 |
| April 2015 | 26,142 | 13 | 2010.9 |
| TOTAL WORDS | 167,060 | 134 | |
| Avg. Words per Day | 1,246.7 |
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