WEEKLY WORD COUNT - Week of May 17-23th - PARADISE SEEKERS

on Sunday, May 23, 2010

Week Dates: 5/17-5/23, 2010.
Total Word Count This Week (Paradise Seekers): 13,588.
Words Total for Paradise Seekers: 35,691

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Excerpts from this week.

She leaned over the table, and I could see the bags under her tired eyes, despite her smile. “Sam, congratulations. You are Crimson Home’s newest Rememberer.”
It was quiet again, with Richard and Maria looking at me inquisitively, trying to figure out what that meant. Even Annie sat up and looked at me, surprised.
“Rememberer?” I asked, after I felt the suspense had properly passed. “I haven’t heard anybody being called that before.”
“Me either, Desmond wondered, looking from me to Jen. “Care to elaborate, or do we just get the title?”
“Well, to quote the book, Sam’s job is to ‘Organize the books in First House.’ I guess this job was more common before; lots of obscure dreams were assigned to be ‘Rememberer.’”
“First House?” Annie spoke for the first time that morning. “What’s that?”
“Well,” Jen took another bite of the charred breakfast. “If all the books I read previously are correct, that was the original name for Old Home.”
Richard suddenly snorted. He’d been playing with his food for the past few minutes rather than eating it. “So we called it ‘First House’ back when it was the only one, and now we don’t use it it’s called ‘Old Home?’ Paradise Seekers are really an imaginative bunch.”

- Paradise Seekers, Day 4 - Rememberer


The next set of pictures were no longer places in Haven, but rather appeared to be the dreams. However, for some reason, they were grimmer than those in the Paradise Seekers book, printed in such a way that gave me chills. The Tattoo dream showed a writhing girl, her hands curled up painfully, her face looking away from her arms as the marks crawled up them. The Falling dream was self explanatory; a figure facing downward, but the Paradise Seeker in this image was covering her face, streams of tears coming from her eyes. The Swinging dream, as well, frightened me. The figure wasn’t facing away from the reader this time; he was staring straight out of the page. Both his hands were lifted above him, grabbing the rope above the tire tightly, his legs dangling.
God, these are creepy, I grimaced. I was about to shut the book, when the last picture made me stop. It was faded, far worse than the rest, but I could still make out key parts. This picture seemed to have two parts. The first showed a screaming figure; due to the fading I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, or even if it was a “he” or a “she.” They were raking their hands through their hair in anguish, and behind them appeared to be a shadow of one of the previous dreams. It must have been the Wrist dream, as I now recognized the writhing figure in the foreground as the same character from the previous picture.

-Paradise Seekers, Day 4 - How It All Ends


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Slow week, unfortunately. I had two major tests and a 5 page paper due, as well as regular school business, so I unfortunately was both pressed for time and stressed, and when I'm stressed I prefer the Xbox over writing. Which is ironic, after that blog post about how I write so much.

I averaged 1,941 words a day this week, which isn't terrible; 2,000 is my most basic goal, and that was nearly met. It's a far cry from 3,000, probably because I'm entering a portion of the book I'm not entirely familiar with, so I have to slow down and take walks to clear my mind in order to continue.

Which, I forgot to mention, is Nathan's Ultimate Writing Secret (tm). Whenever I get stuck, rather than stew on it, I go for a walk. The length of the walk is based on how long it takes me; if I get out there and a block later I know what to do, I head back. If it takes longer, I have gone on 30-45 minute walks (most of these happened at the end of WGMD). I didn't go on many walks this week, minus to and from school, mostly because I couldn't feel justified spending that time when I should have been studying or writing.

That aside, I'm excited for this week. Thursday might be a problem; I have a bunch of mission friends over and they clog up time. I'm also getting a bunch of cavities filled on Writing Tuesday, which might cut back on it a little but I'm hoping not.

This Sunday is CONduit! Hooray! Original Flavor Writing Group and I might be spending the night up at a relative's house on Friday, going all day Saturday, and probably parts of Sunday if we are up to it. Goal is simple: get an editor to request my book. However, I'm flexible, so if I just get a lot of good networking in I'll take it too.

Expect more next week! Goal is to get 20k over the course of the week, which means I need to hit my 3k daily goal pretty hard. Paradise Seekers is now about ~40% done, which is good, because I'm ready to finish it up and work on Effulgent Corruption and editing WGMD.

I'm also planning book reviews of Storm Front and Fool Moon (first two Dresden Files books) this week. If anybody knows where I can get the third one not for money, that would be great, as I'm hooked and it is killing me that the libraries all have it checked out forever.

Have a great week!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Way to kick word count trash. Still jealous.

Unless I'm mistaken, CONduit doesn't have a lot of editors mulling about. But good luck with your goal! I'll see you Saturday. :P

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