Good morning there.
Just sticking my head above the parapet, so to speak, to inform about another (possibly ill concieved) venture on this here internetspace.
Starting from monday I am the beneficiary of a large quantity of holiday. Six weeks holiday to be exact. This removes my normal excuse for lack of productivity, that (oft genuinely) “work gets in the way“.
Great expanses of time like this deserve lofty amibition, high hopes and preconceptions, and of course lists. They need great lists to codify and guilt trip the individual into actually attempting to achieve anyone of the bloody things they actually want to do, but for some reason, seem to be difficult to do. That shouldn’t work should it? Something you -by self profession- both enjoy doing and also want to do more of, is somehow difficult?
Top of my six week holiday list (alongside such mundane item-ry as ‘fix guitar’ ‘buy a coffee grinder’ ‘hang pictures’ ) is to write a book.
Not the book. Not I’m sure I’m ready for all that. But certainly a book. A book. A novel. A veritable tome of words and similes and tortuous blood and heart and brain. To be started on monday, and finished by the first of September when I’m back at the ‘regular’ job.
This sounds cunningly like the Write-a-book-in-a-month job I know. But there is a minor difference.
From prior experience I know that if I can get somewhere between a third and a half written, I’ll get the damn thing finished. A major benefit of past writing experience being that I know I can complete work when started.
To the maths.
Target: 70,00o words
70,000/2 = 35,000
6 (weeks) x 7 (days) = 42 (days)
35,000 / 42 = 833
A bit of sneaky rounding.
840 words per day.
Yikes.
I hope to post daily updates on the progress of said writing. I write best in the morning, so the updates should appear mid-afternoon sometime. To include such exciting detail as: Word count updates!! Excerpts of manically written prose!!! Ongoing chronicle of psychological disintegration of writer?!!!!
See you then.
Tom
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How I am jealous of you… six weeks! I have one weeks holiday where I’m planning to do more intensive writing based on Wolfram Alpha’s theory which informs me that I can write 100,000 words in 28 hours http://www10.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100000+words
Based on this I figure a week should be more than enough! (is it best not to mention that I have spent 5 months getting to 10,000 words)
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One of the few perks of working in education!
That said my achievement won’t look so good if you write more in a week! I wonder at what WPM speed you need to type to get that much done?
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