Just another 1044 words in Diary

Well, today has been a pretty good one as far as days go, for me. I stayed up super late last night as per usual, and slept in on my cot until…geez, 1pm or something. But keep in mind I went to bed at 5am. Anyway, I woke up and immediately sat down at the computer to work on the story. I do the shopping for the house every Friday, and my mom and dad and I all get together in the evening, so early afternoon was really my only chance to get any writing done.

It ended up going well. I am now 1/4th of the way through chapter 21. At least I think so. For all I know, the chapters will start to get longer, or shorter. But usually they are very close to 4000 words, either slightly more or slightly less. My goal is to finish the first draft in exactly 50 days from today, meeting or exceeding 100,000 for the total word count. That means I only have to write an average of 480 words per day between now and then, assuming I can finish the story in a way that satisfies me.

That sounds very doable to me. I used to make myself write twice that much for awhile there. So I am somewhat heartened by that. Basically, the last part of this thing will deal with the relationships between the various characters, with Carmen becoming a vampire and her character changes, and with the final conflict with Toshka, Bavane, and the lost ones. That’s all I have room to do. I’m getting way ahead of myself, here, but if I can finish this one then the next one will be all about the pin man and the “battle” against the Black Hand.

I’ve tried my best to do more reading since I’ve been writing again, and I’m doing pretty well with that, so far. I still need to read more than I am, but at least I’m making an effort to get some done. Mostly, I read news articles, diary entries, and R.A. Salvatore’s book Neverwinter. Salvatore, although he can get lazy with his writing at times, is completely brilliant when he’s in the zone, and no one writes better battle scenes than he does. That’s something my story could use more of…battles. Well, I’ll have a few big ones at the end, and there have been battles already, interspersed here and there throughout the text.

Whenever I’ve gone back and reread what I’ve written (which has been quite often) I find that my battle sequences are some of the best stuff in there. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Once again, my mom prepared an excellent dinner for us all, this evening. She made curry chicken with jasmine rice, brussel sprouts cooked in a nice Asian-style sauce, and a refreshing salad with fresh cut strawberries, all kinds of greens, sweet onions, and sugar snap peas, with a generous drizzle of raspberry vinaigrette. Also, we had sourdough bread with some spicy hummus, olives stuffed with garlic cloves, and some tasty little pickles from France. Good stuff.

Tonight I may play some more Might & Magic X before I hit the sack. I’m not looking forward to finishing the game, as I’ve had so much fun along the way. But, I do have Limbo, and more importantly, the new Meow Dungeon to complete. I’ll probably also listen to one or two of my favorite “podcasts” like maybe The Adam Carolla Show, Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend, This Week With Larry Miller, or even Penn’s Sunday School, while I play Minecraft (or Mindlesscraft, as I call it).

I decided Monday is the day for clothes shopping. There are thrift stores, and then there are stores who sell clothes that aren’t already worn out or stained or worse. Once in a while I’ll find something nice in a thrift store, but these days they are more popular, so the good stuff gets bought right away and all that seems to be left is the rags. So I’ve pretty much resigned myself to spending at least $100 on nicer clothes so I don’t look like a slob at my new job. I’ll be sitting in a training class with the same people for a month. Better to be known for looking good than otherwise. I’m thinking I’ll do all my shopping at Old Navy. I only have a few passable garments at the moment. Definitely not enough to last a month. I can make back the money I spend on Monday once I start getting paid. That’s what I keep telling myself. Sigh…

Another thing I’ve been thinking about as a future project is writing an autobiography. I have years and years worth of diary entries as a resource, more than a million words worth, I’m sure. The first time I printed out all my old OD entries (and that was a long time ago, right after the time we all lost something like 2 years worth of entries due to hackers) it was something like 500,000 words long at the time. Insanity sauce, for sure. And I’ll bet some of you have written waaay more than that, even. Crazy, crazy stuff. But I digress. :)

Writing autobiographies runs in my family. Everyone does it. My grandpa has written 3 long ones, one of which is 67 chapters long, and my grandma has written several as well, in addition to writing a couple of unpublished novels. It’s really my grandma who is my inspiration for working on a novel in the first place, and my family in general for the autobiography idea. Not that my life is interesting to anyone else. Heh. But I don’t care. It’s interesting to me, damnit, and besides, it’s just a record for future generations, assuming one of us grand kids ever reproduces. If I ever start dating again.... I’m just saying. Look out. Seriously, though, I would love to have a family of my own some day.

Well this is long as usual. Oh well, though. I guess I have a lot to say these days. Mostly blather about my writing and my job, but what can you do? Take care, all.

Last updated August 30, 2014