2013 Writing Goal – Weeks 15 and 16

Yeah…I forgot to post my progress last week.  Silly me.

So, week 15.  Didn’t meet the goal.  5,016 words total:

No real excuse for missing the goal.  I just…missed it.  One thing I’ll note about the last few weeks, where I haven’t made my goal: I’ve been doing very little at the beginning of the week, leaving me to play catch-up later on.  Clearly that’s not a winning strategy.

Which brings me to Week 16.

Crushed it!  11,482 words!  Who’s your daddy?!

That brings my total for April to just over 22,000 words, and for the year to 79,400 words.  Not too shabby.  A little below the glide slope for my overall goal, but not too shabby, all the same.

That said, a couple notes about last week.  First, I did the same thing as the last several – almost nothing early in the week, necessitating a lot at the end.  Second, and the key to my success this time, was I did a little time travel.  By that, I mean I flew to Japan on Saturday, the 20th.

The neat thing about flying west across the Date line is you get there a day after you left.  Conversely, flying east you get there the day before you left (depending on when you left).  To put it more precisely, my flight to Narita left LAX at 12:30 on Saturday and landed at 15:30 on Sunday, even though it was only an 11 hour flight.  So when you see the Saturday and Sunday numbers from Week 16, they really, from my perspective, happened on the same day.  I just split them up between writing on the ground in California (Saturday) and writing in the plane or here in Yokosuka after I arrived (Sunday).

I made excellent use of the time on the plane.  Consequently, Sunday was the best writing day in my writing history: 7,082 words.  Pretty sweet.

And yes, I’m aware it’s still Sunday back home.  Well it’s Monday here in Japan.  So chill.  🙂

So.  How am I going to maintain this success, if an 11 hour flight was the key to it?  Great question.  This week will be relatively easy, I think.  I’m here in Japan for an exercise, just me and my coworkers.  Since money is a little tight this time, I don’t intend to go out in town much at all.  In fact, I went by the Navy Exchange just now and got a bunch of Ramen noodles and such for my meals this week.  So I think if I’m not working the exercise, I’ll be in my room, writing.  And then on Saturday, I’ve got a 9-ish hour flight back home.  I think I ought to be able to equal last week’s word count fairly easily.

Once I get back?  One word sums up what I need to continue being successful – discipline.  And so discipline I shall employ.

So there’ve been a few words written lately.  How goes the novel, you ask?

Well.  The Pericles Conspiracy is now up to just over 107,000 words.  And it’s not done.  It’s got somewhere between 5 and 10,000 words to go, if I had to hazard a guess.  Of course, every part I put in ends up being longer than I thought it would, so who knows.  But seriously, it is really really close.  In fact I’ve got the end just about all the way written.  There’s just this part in the middle that I need to finish.  It’s a fairly important/epic/tricky/fun couple of chapters, but I skipped them to finish up the ending because…well, because.  That’s all.  Just because.  🙂  But if all goes well I should have it done this week.  If all goes well.  🙂

I also started another, shorter work that was inspired by Imagine Dragons‘ song, Radioactive.  Even though the song is not about a post-Apocalyptic world (no really, it’s not.  The guy who wrote the song was quick specific about that in several interviews on the subject), this story is about the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war.  Lots of fun.  Must be I’m getting psyched for Wasteland 2, or something.

Right.  That’s about all I’ve got.  Until next time, Go Redskins!

🙂