5239 words today (!!!) I’m at 49,587 words, which is practically 50,000, and the novel’s still not done. I’ve just started writing the final battle, so I’m SOOOO close.
I crushed it word-wise today. Here’s a breakdown of my writing sessions, which started around 9AM this morning.
– I used Dragon Anywhere to untether myself from my phone so I could dictate while I did laundry and morning dishes. This netted me about 250 words. They were a little sloppy, which I wasn’t pleased with, but I’m still getting used to not “seeing” what I’m saying, so that’s to be expected. If I must endure sloppiness with this method, I can handle it in 250 word sections. Very easy to fix with looping, which I have to do anyway.
-I had two good dictation sessions at my desk standing up and walking around, which netted me around 2000 words before breakfast.
-Wrote around 1000 words on my phone for a small time when I couldn’t be at my computer.
-Used Dragon Anywhere to dictate my story while I did the dishes and vacuumed. That netted me another 250 words, though I technically dictated 500-600. Dragon Anywhere stops listening if your phone display goes dark…which I didn’t realize, so I was talking into a void for about 15 minutes, which sucked. Had to redo that section by hand, and if I hadn’t had to do that, I would have definitely broken 50K tonight. Dragon Anywhere has a setting where it will beep at you once the mic turns off, so I turned that on for next time.
-Good ol’ writing at my computer accounted for the rest of the sessions.
The words today were pretty important because they laid the groundwork for Book 2.
My count today puts my total week count at around 16,000-ish words, which is pretty good. Definitely makes up for the last few days where I fell behind on my word counts.
Finishing the novel is pretty much a foregone conclusion tomorrow. Unless something goes off the rails I don’t see how I won’t finish it tomorrow. It might clock in somewhere around 55K, but we’ll see.
I have other cool news that you may find interesting…
OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
I got the novel back from my “city consultants.” I realized today that the best name for them is “fact checkers.” That’s way more accurate for what they did. I was making the description way too complicated (as I usually do…).
Overall, my fact checkers told me that my portrayal of the city was pretty good and pretty accurate. They said it definitely “felt” like Chicago. Both were long-time Chicago residents. One lived in the same neighborhood my hero is from (that I’ve been to once or twice).
My research definitely paid off and it showed. To be expected, I got a few things way wrong, such as public transit. The fact checkers got me all sorted out on that front. The good news is that there was nothing that was a showstopper. Everything was logical to them and made sense, aside from a few minor details here and there.
Their comments also gave me interesting “little” details to help the city feel more real. For example, I had a scene where the hero is riding an electric skateboard through the city streets. One of the fact-checkers said she’d never seen this but she believed it. What she DID see were white “ghost” bicycles that were erected at spots were cyclists were killed (kind of like how people put up hard hat memorials on highways where construction workers are killed by cars). So, I changed one of the lines in the story to have the hero see one of those white ghosts which reminds him how dangerous the damn skateboard is (he doesn’t care, though).
When you sprinkle in enough little details like that, they add up (at least that’s my theory). I’ve screwed up research something awful in the past so that’s a sore spot for me. Want to make sure I lay a good foundation. Doing solid research and talking to people is how you keep learning. Ultimately, this validated my research techniques, which I can apply to future novels. Dedicated, subject matter expertise fact checkers will become a part of my editorial process moving forward. The experiment worked and it demonstrably made the story more accurate.
Overall, I’m feeling great about the city portion, but that’s ultimately up to readers to decide. I’m just happy knowing I did the best I could. Sure, I might make some mistakes. I’ll just learn and apply them to the next story.
Anyhoo, I hope to have some good news tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
PROGRESS TRACKER
Words: 5,239
Calories: 0
Miles: 0
Time on bike: 0
TOTAL
Words: 49,587
Calories: 1050
Miles: 31.5
Time on bike: 630 minutes (10.5 hours)
Pounds lost: 4
