Sunday, February 8, 2009

A Good Day and Some Math

Module 2, Assignment 1 - done.

The internal students are due to begin this module on Wednesday and have the first assignment returned by the following week. That would be Feb 18. I'll be sending it in tomorrow so it should arrive the same day the internal students meet the teacher. Cool. I love being ahead of things.

I received good feedback from my rewrite of Swirls in Obsidian. I'm checking it with one more reader and then (depending on comments), submitting it to PARSEC. Fingers crossed.

Being ahead on my assignments will allow me to concentrate on some reading this week. Any 'spare time' I find at work will be used to revise my other two current short stories in progress.

Tonight I need to find a new market for Too Late the Rain, which has sat around for the last week, which is not like me at all.

I'm aiming to be far enough ahead come the 20th, that I can concentrate on Newland. I'm pretty sure the current scene I'm writing is not required or is slowing things down. I think it's because of this that I've procrastinated in getting back to it. That's got to change. (by the end of this post, this time frame has changed - you'll see)

Having read through the assignments for module 2, it will be all about my current novel in progress so it needs to get done. The last assignment involves gaining critical assessment of some parts of my novel, so I want the writing done before the assignment is due. My current deadline for the novel's first draft is the end of April. The last assignment is due in the end of June (I think). If I can keep to my current goal then I should be able to send off the bits which require critical assessment and get them back, in plenty of time. Yeah right. (and now the math)

I wrote nothing in Newland for January. I have yet to add a single word for February. I have approximately 75,000 words still to write. There's 102 days till June (not long is it), so doing the math: I need to write around 735 words each day to make it. BUT - there is only 81 days until the end of April, which is when I want to finish it by. In that case, I need to write around 926 words a day.

Okay, I've started now. I write between 2-4000 words at a sitting on average. Lets call it 3000 to make things easy. That means I need to find 25 writing sessions between now and the end of April. As we already know, there are 81 days till the end of April so if I have a writing session devoted to Newland every 3 or 4 days, I should make it.

To simplify things, there are 12 weeks till the end of April. That means I need to write 6250 words each week to make it.

In layman's terms, I need two sessions a week devoted to Newland to make my goal.

Guess what I'm doing tomorrow night...

Now which regulars thought I was joking when I said I rambled?

Outta here...

7 comments:

  1. I don't know how you find time to eat.

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  2. No ramble, just good, logical problem-solving.

    Good luck.

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  3. Eating...I knew I forgot something.

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  4. "To Late the Rain" is a gorgeous title!

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  5. So you set deadlines for your own novels? I guess that's a clever idea. I don't have anything to hold me to account.

    Reading the math was interesting. Depending on how you looked at it, it fluctuated between looking hard and looking easy. Best of luck.

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  6. Just reading this is making me feel very lazy. However, it has motivated me.

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  7. Nat - I liked it. Everyone else does as well. Now if I could just find someone to buy the damn story.

    Ben - I need deadlines for everything otherwise nothing gets done. The closer I get to my deadline the harder I work. If I could just get someone to properly enforce them, I might get somewhere.

    Danielle - Glad to be of service.

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