My Ten Day Challenge – Day 7

As Harper Bliss, I’ve never written a work longer than 21.000 words (Fool for Love is the longest). I’ve written two novels, one out there under a different name (ask nicely and I’ll tell) and another one shelved away on my hard drive because, well, that’s the only place it deserves to be.

Now that I’ve reached the 22.500 words mark in Summer’s End, I seem to have hit a wall. I breezed through 3000 words before lunch (1200 before I even had a coffee, straight out of bed and in front of the computer) (some days it’s so handy to have an office/bedroom) and was smiling all the way through my lunch break (not easy when you live in Hong Kong where hardly anyone ever smiles back), enjoying the sun etc., believing this was going to be an awesome day of writing, and then… the wall.

I’m sure it has to do with nerves of writing something longer than I’m used to (I usually stop long before I have a chance to get stuck) and it doesn’t help that my characters have worked themselves into a bit of an impasse. Before I started this novella petite novel, I always envisioned it as a story in two parts and I’ve now reached the end of part one and part two is not sprouting from my fingers the way I had imagined it. My strategy at this moment is just to try again tomorrow morning, when my brain is fresh and roaring to go. I did manage another 1500 words this afternoon, for a total of 4500 words today, which is not bad at all. So, as always, we’ll see tomorrow. But, in general, today was much better than yesterday, I just need to figure some things out.

Apart from that, I’m sick of living alone. I’m not a person who does well alone. I’m one half of a twin and, quite literally, from the day I was born, someone else was always there.

(Have you seen this video, by the way? I’m sure my mother will say this could have been my sister and me 35 years ago.)

I do have a dinner date tonight (and a bunch of plans for this weekend, some healthy and some not), and, at the end of the day, it does look as though I’ll make my word count by my self-imposed deadline, so I really can’t complain (but I do it anyway, I can’t help it.)

Meanwhile, here’s the view from my other office/bedroom window.

Some buildings

The numbers:

Day 1: 1000 words

Day 2: 3600 words

Day 3: 2400 words

Day 4: 0 words

Day 5: 6000 words

Day 6: 5000 words

Day 7: 4500 words

Total: 22.500 words

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