WIP Report #24

The Stats: 6,945 Words this week (Av 1,389 Per Day)

First Draft Total Now: 87,777 Words

I should be chuffed, with 7 writing days left until my self-imposed deadline, I have only 2,223 words left to reach my 1st draft target of 90,000 words.

Self discipline isn’t something that comes easily to me – it’s that word ‘discipline’. It brings back memories of my grammar school education. Thanks to those sadistic bastards posing as ‘teachers’, I’ll forever associate the word with punishments involving canes, slippers, rulers, and board rubbers.

That I’m writing these words 50 years after walking out of those school gates forever shows how deep those scars are, I guess.

I digress. My point is this, since writing the first 1,300 words on 1st November last year, I haven’t missed a single workday. I’ve written early in the morning, I’ve written in the evening, I’ve written at all the hours in between. Whatever else has been going on, I’ve carved out an hour of time and got the words down, and I’m proud of that.

But now it feels like I’ve just started a special forces selection course.

You know what happens to these guys. They’re driven somewhere in the back of beyond and shown a mountain. “OK men,” the instructor barks, “Get your gear on and go run up that mountain. There’ll be a truck waiting for you on the other side tomorrow morning. You’ll get a nice breakfast, then they’ll to you back to camp for a shower and bed…. Now go!”

So off they set, pushing themselves to the limit, visualising that big fry up, feeling the hot shower water, dreaming of a comfy bed.

Next morning as they stagger, exhausted, into the checkpoint, all they see is the instructor waiting for them. There’s no smell of bacon and eggs, no steaming mugs of tea, no sign of a truck.

“Well done sunshine,” the instructor says, handing you a cereal bar. ” Now, see that next mountain over there? I’ll see you on the other side for breakfast tomorrow, now go!”