aaaaaaand we’re back

the writing retreat blog

This is my Writing Retreat Wake-Up Blog, because I have deliberately not asked my host for her intarweb connection information, so I cannot go through my usual morning process of checking FB,LJ, Twitter, and email and must do something to warm my fingers up. Or my brain.

There’s apparently a dance club somewhere beneath my host’s apartment. It didn’t keep me awake, but it did spill a number of talkative men outside my window at 4am, where they remained until 7am, which is when I needed to be getting up. They didn’t exactly keep me awake either, but I was often aware of them. Not aware enough to be really annoyed. The only part that kind of annoyed me was that they gave up at 7, when I could concievably have gone back to sleep for several hours except that would not get me my words. Seems to me they shoulda held on til 8 or something, so that I’d be good and properly awake and functional before they left. Hrmph.

I’m amused at the numbers I saw before leaving, the closest-guess numbers. The most generous I’d seen before leaving was a guess that I would do 21.3K on my retreat. Ted gave a cheerful snort when I mentioned that, and said, “You don’t even have to go away to get THAT much done!”

I suspect if Mikaela has put in a guess she will be much closer to the actual mark. :) Yesterday’s Writing Retreat Wordcount was 8.3K, plus the thousand I wrote in the morning so I would be leaving on retreat with 50K under my belt.

All right. It’s 3 minutes to 8, and 8 marks the start of my first 2-hour writing session. Off I go!

I hate daylight savings. I woke up this morning, looked at my phone, thought, “Shit, 7:30, that means it’s 8:30, I’m not going to get started writing until after 9 or something at this point, I’ve lost half the day, maybe I should just sleep a while longer.”

Eventually I thought to wonder if the phone automatically updated the time, but of course I had no way to tell without turning on the computer. And it turned out the phone had updated itself, so I’d wakened at the new 7:30, which meant I hadn’t lost half the day after all (seriously, when did that happen? When did I become someone who thought it was all a wash if I hadn’t gotten work done by 9am?) so I got up and am now doing my quick morning wake-up blog.

Which had been going to be more extensive, but it’s right at 8:30am now, so I’m gonna go write from that tidy time to some other, later tidy time.

10.2K yesterday, BTW. 18.5 for the past 2 days. I wonder if any of you came close to guessing what my total is going to be…

ELEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED WORDS.

That may have been a personal best. It’s possible I once wrote 12 or 12.5K in one day back at the dawn of time, but it is also possible I am remembering that did that and am attributing her awesomeness to me, so I think I’ll go with 11.5K being a one-day personal best.

I have written 31,000 words in the past 3 days. That’s also a personal best: the previous record was 30K, which is represented in print by “Banshee Cries”, a novella which is just about word for word what I wrote in a 3 day stint after it was commissioned. There’s one scene that was removed: otherwise, aside from line and copy edits, there you go, that’s the result of my previously best-ever writing burst.

Now it’s 9am on Monday morning, I have in the range of 2, maybe 2.5 hours of writing before I get on the train to go home, and then another 2.5 hours on the train. My weekend goal was 80K, which I have now achieved, so today’s writing is pure gravy. I’m very pleased.

#amwriting

on the train
Oh my. The train is warm and it’s sunny and beautiful out, and my will is waning. I’ve done about 4300 words so far, and would like to get another 700. I have a whole ‘nother hour on the train, so I should certainly be able to. I *should* be able to get twice that, if I can maintain focus. I’m really only a scene or two away from the climax, and then the rest is aftermath, which this book has an unusual amount of. But man. 700 more words puts me at 36K for the past 4 days, and I’m feeling drained… #sleepy

(the horrible part is my brain keeps going “36K, that’s only an average of 8K a day, Catie, that’s not THAT impressive.” there is something *wrong* with me. o.O)

(…oh. what’s wrong with me is that i can’t divide simple numbers at this point. 9K a day, which is the actual average, sounds impressive to me. nevermind, then. :) okay, i better go write 700 words so i’ve done an impressive average of 9K a day for the past four days. :))

85021. That’s my final wordcount for the retreat.