I wrote 10K words on Saturday. That was nothing compared to Friday when I set a new personal record with 14K in one day. When I woke up on Sunday morning, the book hovered around 47K. On Saturday and Sunday, I regurgitated 25K words onto my laptop. Even with a half day on Sunday, I cranked out 8K more. I wrote the longest chapter of the book this past weekend at 18K words. That's insane. Most of the previous manuscripts and novels that I wrote were around 60K words and under. I can definitely see this project topping 100K words. Of course I'll try to cut it down to 90K.
Unofficial word count: 55,711 including footnotes.
Las Vegas. I've been writing about Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a city that needs footnotes. I was living in Las Vegas and I had a tough time writing about it there. Horrible. That town fried my brain and sucked up all my creative juices. As soon as I distanced myself from Sin City, I found myself writing about it with a greater ease. Maybe it's the isolation in New York City. I love anonymity of a large city, especially in Winter. In case I bumped into someone I knew walking down the street, the freezing temperatures limited the awkward catch-up conversation to less than two minutes. The sheer size and number of people in the city keeps me humble and allows me to observe things without growing bored of my surroundings.
Here's been the daily break down so far...
Monday: 3100 wordsI've been trying to write 5K per day and I've been getting just under 7K per day on average. I used to try to sleep everyday and set my alarm and get up after 3 or 4 hours of sleep to finish working. I stopped doing that and developed a new procedure. I sleep when I'm dead tired and don't set an alarm. I wake up when I wake up and start edting and writing. No alarms. I let my body tell me when my battery is charged. After being up for 25-30 hours I finally crash for up to five hours straight, which is tough to do for me. I usually wake up about 3 hours in and can't fall back asleep. I slept six the other day, which never do. I'm getting some rest but the feeding schedule is way off.
Tuesday: 9103
Wednesday: 6850
Thursday 6,900
Friday: 14,100
Saturday: 9,7000
Sunday: 8,300
Chapter 1: 16K
Chapter 2: 7.3K
Chapter 3: 7K
Chapter 4: 7.2K
Chapter 5: 18K
On Sunday I took the morning and afternoon off to relax. I ate a bagel, played a little poker, read everything over, and watched football. I bet heavily Pittsburgh over the Bengals. Everything that I had in my offshore account. I picked one game and made one big bet. If I lost, I went bust in that account. If I won, I'd withdraw 75% and add it to my Slacker Fund. I want to earn enough cash this year through poker and freelance writing that I can take off the last three months of the year to travel and write. That big win funded one week of Slack. I have 11 more weeks to fund.
On the first pass of the game, Carson Palmer busted his knee and left the game. I once bet on the Bengals. I took them last year against the New England Patriots. I got 10.5 points and although the Bengals lost the game, they covered the spread and I won a big bet. In that game Carson Palmer left due to an injury and John Kitna, the journeyman QB, came in and kept the game close. I hoped that this time, he'd fail against the Steelers. In the first half, it didn't look good. The second half was a different story. The Pittsburgh defense stepped up and their offense put up a few TDs to seal the victory for me.
On Monday afternoon I'll start the heart and bulk of the book which will take me all week. NaNoWriMo novels have a goal of 50K words in 30 days. I passed that in six. A new record. Does that mean that right now, I am writing 5 times faster than the average writer? I wrote Jack Tripper Stole My Dog (2002) in 10 days. I wrote Sweet Nothing (2003) in 11 days. I wrote the Blind Kangraoo (2003) in a record 9 days. The manuscripts were 50-54K words in length. All of those projects were written straight with no breaks. I wrote Gumbo (2004) spread out over 18 days in Rhode Island last year.
Jerry Ferrara or Turtle from Entourage has been appearing in NY Knicks commercials on the MSG network for the last few months. They are hilarious. And the Knicks won their last three games and pulled out of the basement. They've been scoring points which makes watching the games enjoyable. David Lee. Nate Robinson. Channing Frye. These guys can play. As soon as the Knicks get rid of Stephon Marbury, they might have a shot at winning in the long term.
The apocalypse is upon us. America's greatest writer stooped to a new low. He wrote about poker. I had never been more sicker in my life.
I write about poker non-stop. Somebody shoot me. Quick. Playing poker is 10,000% more fun than writing about it. Unless you're me and lost $1K since Christmas and $4K since Halloween.
Recent Writing Music...
1. Beck
2. Curtis Mayfield
3. Bob Dylan
4. John Coltrane with Thelonius Monk
5. Charles Mingus
No comments:
Post a Comment