Damn, with a helping of Damn.

Something was bothering me last night, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

It started when I was reviewing my production over the last three weeks. There’s been a lot of it, much more than I had done back in November.

I went through my notes, tracked my daily progress, and constructed a spreadsheet. I was looking at the evolutions the book underwent, the various shifts in outline, and what plots I was cutting away and what I was keeping.

The What I did in November was more or less a drive to the middle of what is now Act II, with a whole bunch of plot for acts III and IV

It looked pretty much like this, in terms of days and work . The “Characters” column represents a total for which I still have a saved work file, rather than the progress I verified through NaNoWriMo’s servers. Whenever I made a significant advance in plot or outline, I would update the version number and save again.

Day words Characters
1 5513 30514
2 6015 33442
3 6684
4 8684 48350
5 9394
6 12338
7
8 17755 98985
9 19623 109361
10 22290
11 23326
12 25259
13 26556
14 29229 163838
15 30190 169529
16 30543
17 33357
18 34105
19 28866 161893
20 30913
21 32697
22 35589
23 44084 246157
25 49700
26 51087 285303
29 52887
30 56240
31 56810
32 57540 320511

Day 1 was 10/31/07, and represents my original story concept.
Day 32 was 12/01, my “pencils down” day, after which I played video games and watched movies for a month to recharge my batteries.

Actually, it was more like 2 months, since these are my next milestones, right before RadCon.

Day words Characters
92 59937 333247
102 65778 366235

both included some pretty serious edits, but I wasn’t really back into the writing of it. At the time, I also was targetless, I wasn’t quite happy with the text, but didn’t quite know what to do about it.

In March I decided to go back to short fiction for a while while I figured some things out. In thinking about short fiction, I developed treatments for one novella, one short story, and two new books, plus a third, non-fiction book about Math.

I kind of suck at short fiction.

April saw some interesting changes in how I was approaching the characters and plot of The Book, but my brain was not there yet. In fact, towards the end of March I went back to playing video games, after a 4 month vacation from them.

May happened.

10 Days into June, I got a whole bunch of free time. I knew that in said free time, I would be able to get back to The Book.

So I Played video games, watched movies, and read comic books for a month.

8 to 10 hours a day.

On July 14, I started writing again. Mainly because of Ken Scholes. On July 14, I gave another serious pass at the outline, and tied up the last bits of Act II. Officially, 7/14/08 was Day 258.

Day words Characters
102 65778 366235
258 63318 351626
262 68776 381300
268 89931 495160
273 111119 610655
274 129853 713192
277 144470 792690

On July 14th, I decided that if words were not connected in a row, they did not count. Hence my inclusion of day 102 for comparison above. Because I really wrote about 11000 words that day, and moved others forward to be connected later

For purposes of the exercise, let’s call it Day 1 instead.

Day Progress Total
1 0 0
5 5458 5458
11 21555 27013
16 21188 48201
17 18734 66935
19 14617 81552

Day 1 above is blank because explanations don’t fit into tables very easily. When this push began, I “cut” 13345 words of previously written material, and added 10885 words to the previous manuscript. Right now, there are 3232 “floating” words in Chapter 20 and the Epilogue. The 800 odd word difference between the two totals (14117 vs 13345) have been edited away, leaving me more or less with a wash.

What does this all mean?

Well, first. I like Math. I like to know how things work, and why.

It made no sense to me that in 19 days in “July,” I could produce so much more than I had in 32 days in “November.”

It hit me around 4:30 this morning, and I confirmed it about an hour ago.

In November, I was writing three books, and then decided to write two instead.

In July, I finished one, and started another.

If I move just two pages of my current mega manuscript, Chapters 1-10 are a complete story. Chapters 11-20 most certainly are a full arc, which can be read separately but really should be read about a month after you finish 1-10.

I’ve been saying since the beginning that everything happens twice in the book. Now I know why.

Today and tomorrow I’m going to Finish Chapter 20, and then figure out how to add more words to 1-10. Because now those 63K words really should be 109K, just as should the estimated 94K at which 11-20 will end.

And as I’ve said before, I’m not Harry Turtledove.

I’m Scott James Magner.