Post Xmas, Ready for the End of the Year

Update 29 20-26 Dec. 2021

OK, we’re past the bulk of the holidays and officially into winter this week. Thank god.

I don’t really think of New Year’s as a holiday, I don’t even bother to stay up to midnight anymore, or if I do its because I’m watching a good movie. Also, New Year’s Day is my official Inventory Day at work. So, it’s a crazy 10-hour work day. Not really something to celebrate.

This week was a bit of an ordeal… but I think I’ve gone overly personal already talking about my health issues, and my family has gone through some health issues as well. And then there was a lot of house work that got done this week. Like re-tiling part of the bathroom, fixing the stairs to the basement, cleaning for the holidays. Etc.

This is a blog about writing. Let’s talk about writing.

Words.

I managed to get back on the horse and get in three writing sessions this week. They weren’t on the normal times and days, but they were done. That’s what matters. I managed to get over my weekly goal of 6000 words. Yay! And the book is three chapters further along.

By the numbers. Three sessions, a total of 7438 words, bringing the novel to 122,969.

Pretty good numbers.

Though looking at where I’m at in my outline (chapter 25) and the fact that I have 22 chapters, 2 interludes, and an epilogue still to write… well I think my goal of 150-200K words might be a little… light.

Now I tend to overwrite, as I’m sure many of you who read these blogs already know. So, every chapter will have words cut from them. But still, this novel will NEVER be 150K. I think I will have to push the end goal forward.

X-mas

I’m not going to talk much about the holiday. It was nice. Food was good.

Best of all, I have replaced my broken desk chair. Amazing. I’ve spent the last month sitting on a folding chair at my desk (hoping I would get enough gift cards to afford a new chair)… but my brothers surprised me by gifting me with a chair.

I’m writing this blog while sitting in it for the first time.

The rest of my x-mas was spent watching the Doctor Who Flux special. It was mostly alright though it had a bunch of bad writing in several of the episodes. I don’t want to sound like an old school complainer. I love (new) Who… but there are a lot of parts of it that anger me. Bad writing, changes to characters that are questionable (I hate most of the cyberman stuff in new Who… there was more pathos with the classic stuff), and a lot of overused ideas (weeping angels started awesome but each use of them has added to them in ways that sucked, etc.).

The few egregious writing errors really bugged the shit out of me, to the point where I started to pull out a notebook and write them down so I could complain about them. But that goes against my personal ethos. I HATE reviews or “deconstructions” where people nitpick and complain about everything. I would rather spend my time talking about what I love and less about what I hate. So I threw out the notes.

I just wanted to bring this up, because I just personally think the world could be a lot better if we supported what we loved and let go of what we hate.

Short Posts

I also feel I’ve been giving you all a lot of short posts. But hey it’s the holidays, and medical issues, and other problems. Yada.

Right. Still, I feel the need to deliver a certain level of quality and quantity… and Yes, I can here you asking, “There is quality here?” Ha ha. I know this is little more than a stream of conscious that I fire out once a week. These are not essays I am writing in advance and polishing.

I keep talking about the other things I want to write. Mostly gaming journals. But they usually fall apart (due to not enough material or because anytime spent writing more articles is less time writing the novel. It’s all a balancing act).

I have also promised to talk about TV shows, review books, and maybe write a new history essay. And I’m still trying to get the podcast to happen with more regularity.

I hate ending on apologies every week. But here I am again.

Outro

Thank you again for reading. It has been a hell of a year.