Today I mostly wrote ... the word count thread. > Likes and Comments

You can use them for cooking as well.

Not if you are vegetarian.

Oh, you meant the saucepans...

What else could I have meant??

These saucepan lids. Are they cool touch or do you need to put on an oven glove to peek underneath?

David wrote: "This one just appeared out of nowhere when the protagonist opened her garden gate several hundred words ago and has been hanging around ever since. ..."

give it time it'll probably start subtly critiquing her grammar, diction and dress sense

Jim wrote: "David wrote: "This one just appeared out of nowhere when the protagonist opened her garden gate several hundred words ago and has been hanging around ever since. ..."

give it time it'll probably start subtly critiquing her grammar, diction and dress sense "

She's just taken him a walk, so at the moment she can do no wrong in his eyes.

Written 516 words tonight before my laptop threatened to die on me. I've reached the ever elusive 10,000 words :) never written that much before on one project (except my dissertation!!).

Well done, Claire. it's a great achievement.

M.T. wrote: "Dragons, medieval civilisation and women going into battle with three pot lids covering their bits beside men in full armour! Phnark."

My WIP must be epic fantasy in that case as all my warrior women wear chain mail and are well covered!

Not even a leather bikini?

Quota done for day (suspiciously easily - wonder what went wrong?) and cover has arrived for the same book. It feels very grown up to organise the cover before the book is finished - like that moment when you find you're buying wine that isn't for drinking that evening.

Lovely analogy, Lexie!

Wine is often close to my heart!

I knew I liked you!

Lexie wrote: "Wine is often close to my heart!"

Not too close though. You might achieve 200K words in one evening because you found your head resting on the keyboard. Not that I would know anything about that.....................

;-)

912 today featuring even more of the dog.

Now I'm starting to worry in case something bad happens to him.

I don't mind adult humans getting slaughtered by the score in inventive and bloody ways, but I don't like dogs getting hurt.

Elly Griffiths' one sentence of advice to writers at Granite Noir on Sunday was 'don't kill the cat'. Crime writers can kill any number of people, but harm a cat or a dog and you never hear the end of it.

I have to say I injured a hare in my second last book and felt terrible!

I should think so!

Been world building for my new space opera series (Flick 4 abandoned, at least temporarily, but I do hope to come back to it).

British Commonwealth Space Empire (naturally), relegated to a small backwater of the inhabited galaxy, somewhere out by the bins, and still debating whether brexit was worth the cost, and regretting having to pay the French to brick up the channel wormhole...

Lexie wrote: "Elly Griffiths' one sentence of advice to writers at Granite Noir on Sunday was 'don't kill the cat'. Crime writers can kill any number of people, but harm a cat or a dog and you never hear the end..."

She's right.

I still remember when Inky was shot in Softly Softly back when I was a kid. I was upset for days about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inky_(p...

Been working on a book description for my novel the last couple of days but got back to the novel itself today and managed to re-edit two chapters.

Old Yeller? Real tear-jerker. Dog gets bitten saving the family from a rabid wolf - must be put down.

Only 1,300 so far today - need to get another 700 done but my 8-9.30 optimum writing slot is over!

Phew, got it done. That's today's quota.

1012 today.

Life must have been quite hard before the Word Count tool, I'm thinking. You authors must have spent ages counting!

We just guessed based on 250 words per page.

I counted my MSS rigorously, circling every hundredth word and double-circling every thousandth!

Will wrote: "We just guessed based on 250 words per page."

Unless you were writing in wax crayon, presumably

One, two, three, four, five (quite accurate so far) si... dang!

I think they just used to format it a certain way and then they knew that a dpsheet of A4 was x number of words. Haven't done much this week, tidying up loose ends to set our heroine up for a scene I'm really looking forward to writing.

I always used to know how many words a line (count the number of words on ten lines, take the average, and that average pretty well does you whatever you write)

Then you know how many lines per page so the maths is easy :-)

I remember doing that with an Agatha Christie when I was about ten to work out how much I would have to write to make a 'real' book! I was quite daunted at the thought of 80,000 words - now that seems a bit on the short side!

Done my quota for the day, and managed to leave it at a point that will be easy enough to pick up on Monday. Recovering the momentum on Monday morning is always tricky.

Lexie wrote: "Recovering the momentum on Monday morning is always tricky. "

Yes. I have that problem too.

My way around it is to leave the last couple of hundred words of a session unspellchecked or corrected and then sort them out at the start of the next day, so I read it through and remember (mostly) what what supposed to happen next and sort of automatically continue writing it once I get to the end of the corrections.

I forgot to look at the word count today - probably about 600 words. A change of POV, so no collie in the scene and consequently fewer words.

Yay! 1,500, although I still haven't got to the scene I'm looking forward to writing.

David wrote: "Lexie wrote: "Recovering the momentum on Monday morning is always tricky. "

Yes. I have that problem too.

My way around it is to leave the last couple of hundred words of a session unspellchecked..."

I often stop in the middle unless I know exactly where I'm going with the next scene.

M.T. wrote: "I often stop in the middle unless I know exactly where I'm going with the next scene. "

That's a good idea, except when you

forget what you were going to say when you get back to it. ;-)

M.T. wrote: "forget what you were going to say when you get back to it. ;-)"

That as well, yes.

Alicia wrote: "Old Yeller? Real tear-jerker. Dog gets bitten saving the family from a rabid wolf - must be put down."

Cujo.

The best rabid dog story ever.

I still remember the story of Prince LLewellyn's faithful hound, Gelert from my primary school days. Now there's a tear-jerker if ever there was one!

Elizabeth wrote: "I still remember the story of Prince LLewellyn's faithful hound, Gelert from my primary school days. Now there's a tear-jerker if ever there was one!"

Dave tells that story minstrel fashion. He's been known to bring both children and adults to tears.

Anyone remember The Incredible Journey? It's one of the few animal books I've read - I tend to avoid them because they are always sad and lord knows there's enough going on to make me sad without adding more. It ends happily though, which probably means fans of animal stories would hate it since it bucks the trope. And yes I am a wuss. I cried when Ginger died in Black Beauty.

Cheers

MTM

Didn't write any of my WIP yesterday but wrote plenty of statements and reflections instead!

M.T. wrote: "Anyone remember The Incredible Journey? It's one of the few animal books I've read - I tend to avoid them because they are always sad and lord knows there's enough going on to make me sad without a..."

Yes, I do and I cried, and in black beauty too! Also in War horse!
My uncle laughed at me...

M.T. wrote: "Anyone remember The Incredible Journey? It's one of the few animal books I've read - I tend to avoid them because they are always sad and lord knows there's enough going on to make me sad without a..."

Yes. One of the few books they made us read at school I liked.

I won't be writing much today, other than a blog post.

One of Dave's kids has been binging on Murpurgo books for months. She loves them.
She's recounted a few to me through a veil of tears, lovely girl.

I've been busy doing non-writing but pondering a picture of a friend of Gingerlily's who is apparently known to Tallis