January 1st:
Each page and word count of book so far:
Document 1: 98 pages, 53,883 words
Document 2: 103 pages, 65,415 words
Document 3: 104 pages, 60,462 words
Document 4: [I forgot to record the page count], 50,409 words so far
Total book word count so far: 230,169 words
January 2nd:
Document 4: 52,011 words
January 3rd:
Document 4: 52,928 words
January 4th:
Document 4: 53,073 words
January 5th:
Document 4: 53,843 words
Starting next week, I have to work on Fridays from now on. That means less writing late at night. But at least it's one less night.
I'll try to stress the importance to my family once again how they need to be more considerate when I'm trying to write, they're talking to each other at an unnecessary volume nonstop, and they're wanting to talk to me every 5 - 10 minutes. It probably won't work, simply because they're impulsive and lack the empathy of normal human beings (Then again, with the lack that I see in the world, maybe the whole world is breaking), are forgetful, and obviously don't understand the importance of what I'm making. All they see me do is sit in a chair and look at an inanimate object for hours. *sighs* It's too expensive for me (and them, especially since the rent and other bills were recently raised) to move out into my own place, so I'm stuck with these chatty squawkers.
But I should no longer complain. What benefit is there to be bitter about what you can not change? Dwelling in a way that makes your heart bitter only leads to you becoming a bitter person overall. I'll just have to continue finding ways that deter them until a company out there starts making non-writer human deterrent. Lol. 😄
Edit: Woohoo! I added some new features I think you'll like!
1. You can comment on posts without needing a Google+ account!
2. You can search for previous posts.
3. You can subscribe to the blog via email whenever I make a new post each month. Tip: Be sure to save the email you get at the beginning of the month, as I add to it until the end of the month. I only make a new post once a month. (Personally, I don't like getting a ton of emails, and I think you'd appreciate it, too.)
4. Poll. Personally, I love polls. It stems from my love of multiple choice questions in school. (Funny thing: I used to hate them when I was in Elementary school!) This month's poll is: What's your favorite Fantasy creature? The choices I give you are but some of the creatures you'll find in my book series. Of course, they're not your typical kind of dragons, etc. All of my creatures have several things about them you'd never dream they'd have or be able to do. Especially the Elves. ...And yes, I capitalize the E in Elves for an important reason. ...No spoilers! Hahaha! 😁
But really, think about it. I don't want to wreck the surprise for any of you. I love watching people's reactions. They're the best parts of giving gifts: Suspense and watching people's reactions.
...But I don't prolong the waiting for that reason. It takes a long time to write a story! I'm not a slow typer or anything, as my wpm (words per minute) is an average speed.
It's just a combination of things: The average time I write each day is about 2 hours. During that time, I briefly stop and imagine what should happen next. That can be anywhere from a few seconds to 5 minutes at a time, depending on how long or complex the following scenes or dialogue is going to be. If I'm having trouble problem-solving for my characters, or otherwise figuring out the specific sequence of all that should happen next, sometimes my thinking overheats and I have to make my mind go blank so as to prevent a total shutdown caused by frustration or an anxiety attack. This doesn't happen often, but when it does occur, I usually get up and eat/drink [not alcohol, mind you], go to social media to get my mind off it temporarily (*Twitter, Pinterest, DeviantArt, etc.), stare at the screen, or... most likely, I go back and read 1 - 3 pages before where I left off. Sometimes 4 or 6 pages, if I'm really stumped. But I do that whenever I sit down to write. I read a little before where I left off. That way, my mind's fully into the story, and I'm less conscious of the real world around me (But that's often interrupted when my family talks or makes too much noise, which is why I find it difficult to write when they're still awake, thus why I like writing late at night.). It prevents writer's block, and it makes it run away and cry for its mommy when it threatens to settle in.
*pandiculates* But look at me! I'm rambling again! Good thing I don't write my books like how I talk, or I'd get nowhere! Haha! 😄 Enjoy the new blog features! And please feel free to let me know what you think
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January 7th:
Document 4: 57,798 words
Woohoo! I'm roaring through! Plenty of words has been written since I was able to focus and write all day. Avoiding social media first thing in the morning helps. It prevents procrastination.
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January 8th:
Document 4: 58,850
January 9th:
Document 4: 58,982
January 10th:
Document 4: 60,022
Pages: 100
Since I want to keep each document to a limit of approximately 100 pages, time for Document 5! (December 10th continued into Document 5)
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January 13th:
Document 4: 59,943
Take that back about starting Document 5. I didn't like the last scene because I wrote it half asleep and the informative dialogue of a character didn't make sense. I just thought it was stupid and unnecessary, so I deleted a good 100 - 300 words, rewrote it, and make it much better. I don't often delete scenes like that. I hate doing that too early, but it was necessary because it would have affected future scenes.
January 14th:
Document 4: 59,947 (100 pages, just a few touch-ups, and then on to Document 5)
Document 5: 229
January 15th:
Document 5: 304
January 16th:
Document 5: 2,951
Nothing much happening in life. Rent went up by $50, and my mom is freaking out because she's also making payments on hospital bills from a couple of months ago, as well as paying a little extra on a phone bill we had to make payments on in December.
Many people tend to make payments on their bills in December for the sake of saving money and buying Christmas gifts instead. We don't normally do that, but our electricity bill went up because it's been an unusually cold winter here so far, and we've been running the heaters more often. Thankfully, the day temperatures are going to be in the low 50's (Fahrenheit) this week for the first time in several weeks. (Brr! I hate it when it's in the 40's and 30's! My hands and feet get cold easily, and that's when I can't focus well on writing! I get too restless, trying to get warm again between writing "bursts". Even though my main character loves cold temperatures, I don't! ...Except when it snows. I can spend a long time outside making snowmen and snow sculptures, taking pictures of snow falling, etc.
Now then... I need to get ready for bed. I'm going to start going to bed earlier for now on. I'm tired of being tired at work. Not a good thing to feel in such an important place. I take my job seriously, but since I barely survived during an especially busy day last week with my now-shorter hours barely giving me enough time to finish my duties that day (At one point, I was feeling a tiny bit faint), I really gotta start taking my health seriously, too. ...Haha, and that includes my weight. I don't look it except for my face (I have unusually thick cheeks, according to a few dentists, so any slight bit of chubbiness is noticeable) and one other area, but I'm actually getting a little bit overweight. Since lack of sleep can make you heavier, I'm going to try getting at least 8 hours of sleep each day. 7 isn't enough, but it looks like tonight it will be approximately that much.
And don't get me started on taking a nap after work. After that one time I had a seriously bad nightmare after school back in high school, I've rarely had the courage to take a nap during the daytime. And lately I've been having uncomfortable dreams. Dreams that are sort of bad dreams, but they're more unsettling than scary.
Like that one I had just the other day: It was a short dream just before I woke up, but I was looking closely at an old table with ants eating at the center of it. There was one unusually large termite in the mix that had been trying to eat the table, too, but the ants killed it and had since continued working. The environment I was in had a disgusting, sticky feel to it, the kind of feeling you get when you touch something sticky like dried, sticky apple juice that had been sticking to a table in a filthy, abandoned house, or like being in someone's filthy, smelly house. ...I swear, out of all homes I've ever visited, most were filthy and smelly.
I suppose mine is smelly a little bit. Having a cat litter box and a smelly dog does give this place a musty smell. But it's mostly the dog. Even a week after giving her a bath, she has a musty, greasy dog smell to her. Whatever she sleeps on ends up smelling like her. I've had to wash my robe a few times from forgetting it on the couch. One time, my mom had just pulled out the laundry out of the dryer, and she thought it was okay for Sandy to lie on my robe while she folded the laundry! I was a bit upset about it that time. I had been anticipating wearing it on that cold evening (I wear my robe all the time when it's cold), but the smell that had basically been stamped on made me gag.
Oh, I just remembered yet another bit of proof as to why I can't take a nap during the day. As I was saying a little bit ago, I've been having sort of bad dreams lately, right? Well, this morning, I guess this can be called an actual bad dream:
I was high up in an apartment skyscraper in Tokyo, and I was looking outside, staring in shock at the skycraper across from me rocking back and forth, the building having a split down the center, opening and closing. My building was rocking, too. We were having an earthquake. I finally took action and told an unknown person, "We need to get out of here, NOW!" and ran across a small living room. In my mind, I knew it would be a bad idea if I tried taking an elevator down, but I wondered if my building had stairs. I don't know why I even questioned that possibility.
I can't remember what all that happened in the dream, but it was so detailed, it was beautiful. I don't often have dreams that have many things like countless cars, buildings, people, voices, and the individual waves of the ocean glittering in the sunshine of a sunrise or a sunset, so it was breathtaking.
Down below, on the street, people were running and panicking, and several exclamations could be heard. I couldn't understand any of them. My brain didn't even form whole words in my head. Maybe except for one lady exclaiming, "Ichiohua!" According to Google Translate, it means "Position off." Well, I hope that's what it means. I don't want to be accidentally cussing on here just because Google Translate decides to make mistakes, like it always does. ...But I don't know. Maybe my memory is failing to remember what the lady was really saying. It could have been "Tichio" or "Hichio", but since I don't trust Google Translate to be translating my words correctly, I'm going to stop guessing.
Anyway, time is dragging me down, and I'm going to have about 6 hours of sleep now. (Oops.) So, I'll try to make this quick: The rest of the dream involved me trying to locate my family (For some reason, I switched from being me to my male cousin-in-law) by going through crowded road barriers, climbing over fences, and climbing up steep hills away from the city. I eventually found L (my cousin's name abbreviated for privacy) and the three kids. Oh, and I was the only one who had our van keys for some reason, so L and the kids had to wait until I made it to them to drive us out of there. But I woke before we went anywhere. I think it was my sigh of relief of finally seeing all three kids and L together safe and sound that might have woken me up. Oh, yeah. And I had called L on my cell phone several times during the long trek. And I was wearing a grey-blue business suit with white cuffs. Maybe my apartment doubled as my personal office? Either way, my suit and the apartment/office looked snazzy. Too bad there was a small split in the floor. ...That's right. I remember that now. I had to jump over that in my wooden living room floor. And there was a circle of floor cushions near my feet.
Agh. I knew I shouldn't have blogged tonight. I stopped writing at a decent time, thinking I was doing so good so far. Oh well, tomorrow night is another opportunity.
Good night, and stay safe! If you live in earthquake country, put together a survival pack near your front door. I need to do the same, too. A deadly earthquake is due to hit this region any possible day, according to experts. Then again, if the predicted earthquake were to hit here, I'd be gone in seconds. This whole area by the coast would be liquefied. So, if you hear of Seattle and the coast stretching 30 - 40 miles north of it being wiped out or having severe damage from an earthquake, call me gone. (P.S. I'd live anywhere else but here, but I love my job, and my mom and sister would find it impossible to keep up with the bills. Plus, they're too stubborn to leave this city, and I care too much about them to leave them unprotected. Neither of them have much of a head on their shoulders. Most of their heads have been hacked off. They're both like a Nearly Headless Nick from the Harry Potter series. ...But enough with funny/weird similes. Time to force myself off the internet to tackle Life and win one of its clever, unpredictable games: A game called "tomorrow."
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January 21st:
Document 5: 6,162
January 22nd:
Document 5: 9,374
January 23rd:
Document 5: 10,867
January 24th:
Document 5: 10,913
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Oops. It's March 11th, and I haven't been updating this blog. Nothing bad has happened. Blogging just takes away portions of my writing time. I'll try blogging at the end of every month at least, so this won't happen again. I can't perfectly guarantee I will, as life can be unpredictable, but it's now my goal. So, sorry for not blogging this long. Now to catch up....
January 26th:
Document 5: 10,935
January 28th:
Document 5: 11,589
