Unnerving and then outside editing and critiques have been swallowing much of my creative juices. I can give myself all the time I'd ever need, but if I'm working on somebody else's stuff, I'm screwing myself out of a word count. Other people's stuff, it just saps you.

With that in mind, I've had an idea floating for the last few weeks about a monster(s) novel that mashes a bunch of stuff and sets it to a TV show run by the CBC that basically documents criminals trying to make it to the paradise (somewhere in Alaska, not sure where just yet) beyond the irradiated, flooded, and floored western half of Canada (starting in Brandon, Manitoba). Anyway, I don't have most of the particulars yet because I haven't thought of them.

Now over the last month or so, I've pulled double duty on Unnerving stuff and then critiques to give myself some free time. How much will depend, but I can surely force ten days mostly to myself, given the extra hours I've done since January. So that's the plan, I'm going to write a 60K-70K word manuscript over the next ten days, and I'm going to blog about it to be accountable to my goal.

Failure double sucks when other people can see it.

Seems to me that the best way to do this is to diary my days to figure out where I can better my chances and then give anyone interested something to root for or against.

Saturday

10:00 AM - Woke up

10:30 AM - Ate breakfast (Special K mixed with Harvest Crunch and milk)

11:00 AM - Got idea to start writing book instead of getting super ahead on edits, started writing

12:30 PM - Hard drive malfunction, nervous Googling to figure out how to access files (I Dropbox-ed two days ago, but still)

12:45 PM - Ate lunch (leftover rice, refried beans, taco meat, and spicy sauce... burrito) while hard drive doing something because I couldn't think about writing until I knew

1:15 PM - All fixed, back to writing.

4:15 PM - Jets versus Golden Knights (go Jets go)

5:00 PM - Writing between periods

5:15 PM - Jets up 3-1 going into second period

6:05 PM - Writing between periods, ate granola bar

6:20 PM - Jets up 4-2, carry through victory, lead series 1-0

7:00 PM - Writing

7:30 PM - Made Jiffy-pop (supper) and started watching The Running Man for ideas for an evil game show host

8:15 PM - Popcorn eaten, movie paused, writing again

8:30 PM - Drowsy, went for walk by the ocean, then to Walmart for cat treats and cat litter

9:45 PM - Writing

11:30 PM - Ate snack (graham crackers) and wife gave me rundown of TV show I watched one episode of but she finished the series. Turns out serial rapist who gets teenagers to rape too, what a twist

12:00 AM - Writing

1:00 AM - Drowsy again, got on exercise bike, listening to The Changeling by Victor LaValle, so good

2:00 AM - Shower

2.15 AM - Writing

3:30 AM - Wrote blog post about day, then went to bed

Day I Word Count: 10,013

Total Word Count: 10,013