February 3rd – 104,880 words

I guess I stopped writing about ten minutes early this morning. If I’d just written another four or five sentences or another quick exchange of dialogue, I’d have pushed through 105k. Never mind, I’m still on target, still going strong with another 3,269 words under my belt. That means I’m about 4 and a quarter days ahead of schedule, so despite expecting to lose time against the schedule at this juncture, I’ve actually increased my lead on the relentless bus.

My big problem now is the idea that’s formed in my head for a novel, the whole story dropping into place during the night. God I wish I could tape the visions that run through my head when I’m asleep – no not THAT type of vision, get your mind out of the gutter. I went to bed thinking, wouldn’t it be neat if… and work up this morning with the whole thing novel formed, just needing to be fleshed out. Unfortunately it’s in a genre I’m not familiar with, so rather than being a writing project it’s really a research one, so I don’t want to tackle it at the moment as research doesn’t count toward this target, which is a serious bummer.

It hit my productivity today, I spent time thinking about this great new idea of for a very original protest novel, when I was supposed to be thinking about the character development happening at a crucial point in my current w.i.p. Still I managed, eventually, to put it to one side, and pick up the w.i.p. and get cracking. Once I got a start, it flowed, but as I said, if only I’d kept going that little bit longer… oh well… spilt milk under the bridge and any other mixed metaphor with knobs on that you can think of for yourself.