Saturday, July 15, 2017

DAY SIX: NUMBERS FOR BETTER LIVING



Anybody who thinks numbers aren't beautiful has never been a writer. As much as I have a love of mathematics (much like I have a love of boxing: I'm not much cop at anything beyond the basics, but by God, I love what the form can do), it's the rise in pure numbers that gets my authorial mind smiling.

Let me show you. As of the close of business today:
  • 6700 words on Ghost Tracks, taking the text from 17,500 to a shade over 24,100.
  • 3000 words on Song of the Water, equalling 1 complete short story, taking the proposed collection to, in a beautiful piece of symmetry, a shade over 24,100.
  • 300 words on The Ballad of Arthur Williams.
Equalling 10,000 words since I arrived here.

See? Isn't lovely? Doesn't that make you smile? Because it make me grin like a freaking loon.

The other thing that made me smile like a loon today was my family deciding I needed to be taken out for dinner, and driving all the way here to pick me up and take me out. I'm loving this small taste of the life I want to live-- writing full-time; advancing projects on a daily basis; drinking up the solitary, reflective life of an artist-- but it means nothing without the love and support of those I love, and I've been missing them terribly. Everything I do, everything I sacrifice, everything I undertake: without them, it's ashes.

It's a small thing: a meal together, some laughs and togetherness. But it gives me the motivation to keep going and do them proud.


Batts.jpg

They followed me home. Can I keep them?

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