Another long day. So I fail to hit my target of the end of the month, but I’m still going to aim for the end of the weekend. Finishing the second draft only two days behind schedule would still make me rather happy.
I went to see this tonight (yes, when I should have been editing). It was excellent, and while I can’t claim that it had a definitive Coen Brothers mark (because I haven’t yet worked out what that is), it definitely stood out as “different” somehow.
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Long, long day at work today. So I didn’t have the chance to edit. I did look over the chapters, and it looks tough to get six done tomorrow… Chapter 10 itself doesn’t look too bad, I think it’ll be easy to cut down. Chapter 11 will probably be harder. Chapter 12 might well be the toughest left, because the current material for it is extremely sparse. I think 13 and 14 will be easier, and then 15, because it’s the end, will probably be hard (although I do not plan any major changes to the ending at this point).
This is one of the most insane local government ideas I’ve ever seen: San Francisco’s Planning Commissioners are considering ordering North Beach pizzerias to close at 02:00—to combat drunkenness.
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That was difficult. And now I have six chapters to do in two days. That looks both very tough and quite achievable.
Word count: 47930
The chapters from my first draft are extremely uneven in terms of length (and in other ways, too). Going through them and trying to make them more uniform requires switching between doing a lot of cutting and doing a lot of new writing, more of the latter than I had expected. So I’m still far away, but I haven’t given up hope of getting there before Saturday.
Word count: 45630
From the just-because-you-can-doesn’t-mean-you-should department: a web game that turns Pac-Man into a text adventure. Seriously.
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That took a lot longer than I’d hoped. Finally past the halfway point. With four days left in the month, I have seven chapters to go. I might need some of this weekend to do it.
Word count: 42598
On Saturday night I went to see the Berkeley Rep’s after the quake, an adaptation of two stories from Haruki Murakami’s collection of the same name. The two stories were “Honey Pie” and “Superfrog Saves Tokyo”.
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I cut over 10,000 words today, but the last 3,000 or so in this chapter are proving difficult. Progress this weekend was rather slow.
I’ve been editing for most of the day, but there have been some distractions, and freerice.com is one of them. It’s a not-for-profit site that apparently uses ad revenue to give away rice through the United Nations World Food Program… and it’s also a vocabulary game. An addictive vocabulary game. It gives you a word, and you have to choose its meaning from a list of four.
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Working my way through it. I don’t have a solid word count for the finished part yet. Hopefully I can get it and a few more chapters done tomorrow…
Too tired. Since there are only seven days left in the month, I need to do two chapters tomorrow and one per day thereafter. Tough but possible. Starting the editing process earlier in the day would probably help a great deal.
You’ve probably seen this already, but just in case… Chuck Norris has endorsed Mike Huckabee in one of the strangest political ads I’ve seen.
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Moving along…
Word count: 37266
Apparently anything less that total compliance warrants being electrocuted. I don’t think this one, involving a motorist protesting at being given a speeding ticket, is as egregious as either the UCLA or University of Florida incidents. But it’s still wrong.
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But the need for sleep won out.
Word count: 32033
I edited all of Chapter Six today, which catches me up one day. If I keep up that pace, I’ll manage to get the remaining nine chapters done this month.
Word count: 32033
I played the A Game of Thrones boardgame by Fantasy Flight, based on the George R. R. Martin novel of the same name, on Sunday. I enjoyed it, despite doing poorly in both games. I tend to do poorly in games with more than two sides (although the Illuminati boardgame may be an exception). A Game of Thrones is fairly intricate, is quite different from other games that I play, and each game took about three hours to play (we played twice). I’m not sure that knowing the rules better would shorten the game, because I think the extra time would be taken up with political dealmaking (it’s harder to make deals if you just don’t know what actions make sense).
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Done. At last. Just ten more chapters to go…
Word count: 26701
Needed a break even from trying.
This is what my neighborhood looked like last Tuesday morning:
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