Day 4: 8,294
Day 5: 8,607

Let's start with what everyone's talking about -- Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States of America. Very, very cool. Also, Sarah Palin will not be one breath away from being the next president of the United States of America. Even cooler. Let's be honest about this, Obama being elected is a big deal. There are people who still remember the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and segregation. They remember kids being blasted with high powered hoses and tortured for wanting to go to school and have the same rights as white people. Sure, there are still a lot of narrow-minded people out there. 44% of people who said race was a factor when they voted said that they voted for McCain. That's unfortunate, but we, as a nation, have come a long, long way and I can honestly say for the first time in a long time, I'm sort of proud to be an American today.

On to the WriMo! Jewelie e-mailed me this awesome application for spreadsheet. Basically, it's a chart and each day you enter your total word count and the ammount of time you spent writing and it calculates all kinds of things for you. Words per hour, words per day, words left, % change in pace, goal for tomorrow, projected finish date, percent complete and writing hours left. You also rate your morale on a scale of 1-10 and leave comments if you like. It creates a pie chart of % left compare to %.

So, according to this application, I have 55 hours of writing left this month.
 I'm 17% complete. I only wrote 313 words today, but that's because I got out of work at four and Jewelie had to work at five. I didn't want to drive home for a couple hours and then have to drive back, so I went to Star's a took a nap. I got home around 9:30, wrote for half an hour, had some dinner and now Sally and I are updating you on my progress. Jewelie is watching Dr. Horrible next to me and it's awesome. Seriously awesome. I love Joss Whedon. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to stay up and watch the whole thing (again) tonight, so I'm not going to get as much sleep as I hoped I would. Also, I have a crush on Nathan Fillion.. and Neil Patrick Harris. I think I have a better chance with NPH.

So, I wrapped up Chapter 3 today and will work on Chapter 4 tomorrow. I should actually get a bit of writing done tomorrow. I'd like to get at least 2,000, but we'll see. The weekends are obviously where I'm going to get most of my work done, but I can't have many more 300 word days like today or it's going to be more difficult.

Well, I'd like to focus more of my attention on Dr. Horrible now, so I'm going to go now. Oh yeah. Jewelie and I went to the Portsmouth Tea Company yesterday and wrote for a few hours. The owner was very nice and it was quiet, which was good for writing. It's his first cafe location and while I like Breaking New Grounds a lot more, we'll probably end up back there a couple more times this month. Check it out if you get the chance.


-Shawn

Day 1 Word Count: 998
Day 2 Word Count: 4058

Well, it's time to update for the last two days. Yesterday was insane and I was only able to write a little under1,000. In order to make the goal of 50,00 words in 30 days you'd have to write 1,667 per day. Jewelie and I went to Breaking New Grounds today and I was able to write a little over 3,000 more, so I am currently on pace to achieve my goal.

Here's how yesterday went for me. I got out of work at two and then went to hang out with Jewelie's family. After that we went home, gave Sophie to my parents and went to the cafe, so I didn't even start writing until about 7:30. I started writing The Impostors, but thought the beginning sucked and switched to Regret, a novel I've been working on sporadically for about a year now. At 9:00 we left the cafe -- Jewelie went to a party and I went to Al's house. I restarted Impostors to Al's and am happy with the new beginning. Now the story has some great direction and I am positive I will make the 50,000 word goal. I'm also pretty certain that 50,000 words will not finish the novel.

Another fun story that isn't related to writing... we took Sophie trick or treating for the first time on Friday night and it was a lot of fun. We couldn't find her Patriots Cheerleader costume, so we went and got her a pirate costume. She was very cute and she did very well with strangers. I would have to kneel down at each house and tell her to say "Trick" "or" "Treat" one word at a time. She was also good about only taking the ammount of candy that people told her to, except for at the Haas' house, where they were giving out full-sized candy bars and she took six. It was really funny.

Alright, back to the writing: I don't work at Market Basket tomorrow, so I should be able to knock out at least another 2,000 words.  I also requested Wednesday off from UPS so I could stay up late and watch the election results, so I'll probably get quite a bit of writing done on on Tuesday night and possibly Wednesday afternoon as well. If I could get to 10,000 words by Wednesday night I'll be happy.

Unfortunately, nanowrimo.org is running very slowly right now. From what I've heard, it's always like this on opening weekend, but it gets better as people start to drop out. I'll post a link to my profile on nanowrimo tomorrow night.

Jewelie told me that it was her goal to have her novel sent to publishing companies by next year. I would like to achieve that same goal. I'm actually nervous about how my novel will be received by publishing companies. I'm sure I'll get a lot of "no's" before I get a "yes". I don't like rejection, haha.

Oh well.. I need to finish a novel before it can be published.. and Al is giving me crap for blogging instead of writing, so I'm going to go work on The Impostors.


-Shawn


P.S.- Sally the Update Cat couldn't be with me for this update as I am at Al's house. I assure you that she is doing fine and is actually with me as we speak. I hope for her to be with me through a majority of the updates as this month progresses.