Challenge,  On Writing

Last Day of Writing a Novel in Half a Month

Chapter Fifteen: Day Fifteen of Writing a Novel in Half a Month

Last day. Unless I don’t finish the book, then I will have to find a new name for this series of blog posts. So we shall see what happens today.

Day Fifteen, Entry One.

11:30 am to 1:00 pm.  I got up an hour early for some reason this morning, even though I went to bed at the same time. Not sure why, but made it to this internet computer by 11:30 am and worked on email and some other issues until 1:oo pm.

1:00pm to 1:45 pm. Over to the writing computer and stopped right at 1,000 words done in 45 minutes. That’s moving for me, but near the end of the book so always moves faster at this point.

1:45 pm to 2:30 pm. Back to more business stuff and emails.

2:45 pm to 4:00 pm. Lunch with Kris, then walked her down to our offices downstairs to get some exercise and actually get out of the building for a moment. We actually to get to the office in this same building, we go out the front door and around the block and go in another entrance. This condo complex is a full block of downtown Las Vegas. Our office is a bottom corner condo. We live on another corner on the top floor. Nice to have seperation.

4:15 pm to 5:00 pm. Back her to do more email and then take a short nap.  Then to this computer to write this first entry.

 

Day Fifteen, Entry Two.

5:00 pm to 6:00 pm.  Wrote the first entry, then decided to get a little more exercise, so did a bunch of trips from our condo to downstairs and around, including walking to get us dinner.

6:00 pm to 7:30 pm. Dinner with Kris. Watched the news.

7:30 pm to 8:00 pm. More email.

8:00 pm to 9:15 pm. Wrote 1,200 words on the book, then back to work on putting Pulphouse #12 together. The June issue. Then to write this entry.

Feeling pretty close to having the novel done. Another session or two tonight should do it. Thank heavens. I didn’t want to change the name of this blog series, plus these things get really repetitive. Time to be done. But it certainly has helped me become a ton more aware of how I spend my days. Every minute of my days.

Day Fifteen, Entry Three.

9:30 pm to 11:00 pm.  Took a nap, then watched some Voice with Kris. Ended up with a headache, more than likely from eyestrain, so a couple of Advil and a few snacks and back in here to finish this.

11:00 pm to 12:35 pm. Wrote about 1,700 words with only one short break and got to what I think is the ending just fine. 1,700 words is a lot of words and can cover a lot of validation stuff at the end. Amazing how that works.

So for an epilog to this process, I’ll talk some about it in one last chapter tomorrow night. But now the daily schedule stuff is done. The book is done. After things calm some later next week (I am turning in a ton of projects), I’ll send the book to WMG for copyediting.

And I’ll put all these blogs together as well and fire them to them. This blog book will be a formatting nightmare. But at least it is only around 10,000 words of nightmare. (grin))

TOTALS FOR NOVEL.

Day One… 3,004 words

Day Two… 2,950 words

Day Three… 2,500 words

Day Four… 1,810 Words

Day Five… 0 Words

Day Six… 1,750 Words

Day Seven… 3,350 Words

Day Eight… 3,100 Words

Day Nine… 3,950 Words

Day Ten… 2,500 Words

Day Eleven… 3,600 Words

Day Twelve… 2,900 Words

Day Thirteen… 3,400 Words

Day Fourteen… 2,400 words

Day Fifteen… 3,900 words

TOTAL… 41,114 words. (Actually, because of the rounding I did in each session, It is 41,208 actual words by computer count.)

6 Comments

  • Kate Pavelle

    Woo-hoo! Congratulations, Dean. Your focus on getting things done is a thing of the legends.

    • dwsmith

      Thanks. Never used to be this much of a multitask person. Just sort of grew into it over the last ten years or so.

  • Céline Malgen

    Well done, Dean!

    And thanks for sharing. The numbers are quite telling, especially with your crazy busy schedule. Without any day at 4,000 words or above, and even one day at 0 word, you still get to a finished novel in 15 days. It shows how it adds up when you keep coming back!

  • Desikan

    Congratulations Dean !

    Thanks for sharing your journey on this.
    Truly inspiring and made me get to my writing computer often than would have otherwise.