Works in Progress: Update #3: The Thanksgiving Update
Hola, would be readers, and bienvenidos to our [checks notes] third update for those devious little Works in Progress to what we call my current writing projects. This update, like the previous one, has a name! The Thanksgiving Update.
This might suggest that the update is scheduled to come out around the time of Thanksgiving, but here it is on November 21st, a little under a week away. I wonder what that means.
Well, let’s find out and dive deep into what’s going on with these writing projects.
Reflections on NaNoWriMo
In the previous update, I set out to accomplish NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, by promising to finish at least Part 2 of my novel in progress G.J. I then immediately had a week’s long bout of stomach issues that robbed me of my patience and focus for everything, writing included. In short, we lost a week of November.
With this in mind, I secretly amended the goal of hitting the 50,000 word count that is the spirit of NaNoWriMo to just finishing Part 2 and writing an update where I tell everyone I have finished Part 2 and am in the process of composing Part 3. I mean, I also started this in the last update, but secretly, secretly I was going to try to hit 50,000 words and impress everyone (especially myself).
Best laid plans of mice and men are often ruined by stomach issues. I don’t know about you, but when my stomach’s on the fritz, I cannot concentrate worth anything. I’m not even sure what I did that week. It’s just lost time.
This is just a preamble bit so that the next bit, where I go into detail about the progress made, hits harder.
Reflections on Progress
Having lost a week to body problems, I want to say I dug in deep to try to still hit our goals and make everyone happy (and love me). I want to say that, I really do, but the truth of the matter is that no deep digging needed to happen. More so and more so, this novel has been way more easily breezily than lemon squeezily.
I’m not trying to undermine my efforts or appear more humble either. The words are just pouring out of me at a pace that I am wholly unfamiliar with. It could be because every waking second of free time is spent thinking out the next bit so that each time I sit down to write, I’m literally just transposing thought to word. It could be that I have become a bore in terms of in-person conversation because I’d rather be thinking about what’s going to happen next in the novel to the detriment of all the parties and friends found at said parties who find themselves trapped talking to me.
Those are certainly possibilities.
Anyway, here’s the updated graph of progress for each of the “current” works in my stable.
I’m out of jokes about this graph.
I put current in quotes because I’m still just working on G.J. None of the other bars have moved even a little, don’t waste your time looking at them. But you can see that we are climbing closer and closer to 60,000 words in G.J. and that’s just a Good Job all arou–I’m not going to stop making this joke until the title is revealed or changed.
Of course, I am leading you to asking, well yeah the overview graph is all well and good but we can’t see the numbers, Henry, and we are only hungry for the numbers. Stop waxing poetic about how you only work on piece. We know that. We know you.
Well fine, then, hypothetical argumentative people I have built up in my brain and am now defensive against, let’s get to the numerical breakdown of G.J. by its parts.
Fun fact: Numb3rs was also the name of television’s #36 ranked show in 2005.
Part 2 is finished. That’s why this update is hitting a week earlier than I planned. Yeah, it’s…mind boggling, but I wrapped up Part 2 a few hours ago and still had some juice in the tank, so we’re writing a progress update. It’s…what? Who thought we’d get this far? Certainly not me.
And there’s a further update in that Part 3 is already 1400 words in. Pulling the curtain back a bit, I jumped right into Part 3 after wrapping up Part 2 without so much as taking a break.
I’d say we’re rapidly approaching the end of this book, but each time I finish one of these Parts, the task ahead feels so much more daunting than simply “just continuing to write.” But that’s what’s going to take in the end. It just feels like a new obstacle in the path, but the solution is the same. The only way out is through.
So there we have it. 28461 words. Part 2 in the book, so to speak. Revisions to come, of course, but the bones are there. Now what?
Reflections on Reflections
Writing these progress updates is a bit bittersweet. On the one hand, there’s progress each time in a way that surprises even me, the person doing the writing. On the other, the fact that I’m writing an update rather than an article about something I find interesting leaves me with regret.
I want to write dumb, fun, and super focused articles for you again, but the sum total of my writing energies and efforts are taken up with this novel lately. It’s a good thing, sure, but it’s kind of funny that I started this blog back in March with the intention to write every day and only publish the good stuff and now I’m writing every day(ish) and publishing nothing.
In a way, it’s been a huge success. In other ways, it’s been an objective failure since the only real content is “Hey, I’ve been writing but I can’t show you.” Maybe I’ll try to rectify that soon. We are heading into what has been historically for me the least productive time of the year. One of the few saving graces of leaving the world of academia behind is that there’s nothing really going on at this time of year. No big lead up into finals or grading papers. There’s just the cosmic and eldritch horror of The Holidays looming on the horizon, threatening to gobble up all of the productive energies for the promise of a break, finally.
Maybe some of that time can be spent on some dumb fun, and super focused articles. I haven’t written a word review in months and those are some of the most fun I have with writing.
We’ll just have to see what the future holds.
Reflections on Conclusions
Endings are hard. Bye!
