I most likely won’t reach my NaNo word count goal for November, because of Various Reasons, but I’ve written a lot more this month than I would have without the goal, so I’m still feeling good. What’s more, I’ve got some momentum going — dare I say it, some excitement — and I’d like to keep it up, because I want to finish this novel sometime in the next three decades.
So here it is — my Crane Girl word count progress meter!
As you can see, I just passed the 10,000-word mark recently.
Why is it all fancy? Why can’t you just have a solid blue bar like a normal person?
Because this is more fun, and hopefully more motivating.
Okay but why the Avatar characters? What’s the connection with Crane Girl?
No connection, I just like Avatar.
From bottom to top, we have Suki, Sokka, Toph, Katara, Zuko, and Aang. Not that you asked.
Whose art did you steal? I know you’re not that good of an artist.
I don’t care for your tone, but the artwork is taken from the show itself (from the first episode of Korra, actually). I did some editing — okay, a lot of editing — in Paint.NET, and voila! Progress bar.
Geez, how long did this take?
I don’t want to talk about it.
If you’d taken all the time you spent on creating and explaining this progress bar, and spent it actually working on your book …
I said, I don’t want to talk about it!
Why is the goal 128,000 words?
The first draft was around 127K, and the second draft will probably be longer. Really, anywhere in the 125K-150K range wouldn’t be a surprise. But 128K is just a good, semi-arbitrary number to shoot for.
Are you going to put word count updates on the blog?
Yeah, probably every week or so.
Why are you doing this to us?
Well, it’s not really about you. I’m just trying to motivate myself.
None of this interests me at all.
That’s not a question.
No, it’s really not.
I see what you did there.
Okay, I’m off. More words today!
Brian D. Buckley 