May 2020 Challenge - Write Every Day!

Some Words

Taylor - You’re very much welcome!

April - Chocolate cookie was yummy! Thanks! You were certainly busy!

Layla - Always good to be back! WTG on the word adds.

Wrote just under a page.

Cindy and Taylor, congrats on the words!
Layla--I feel, on the chores. Congrats on the things getting done.

Me: very quick pass through chapters 24 and 25. Cut them from 3800 to 3130, and overall they are shaping up but I will work them harder tomorrow. Today sort of got them into working memory. Some editing, but they need more. That sounds like Friday's work to me.

Now chores. Yuck.

So far today is a drive by. I just can't seem to get motivated. Maybe vegetables and tea for dinner will help. If all goes well, the new AC unit will be delivered and installed next week. I'll have 18 months to pay it off or they start charging a hideous amount of interest. Better get to work on something.

Layla - let's see how long you cackle when I call you from lockup. I forgot we had an incident of rabid corporate lawyer attack right here in my backyard--specifically, neighboring Lebanon County. Years ago, Lebanon car dealership L&B Dodge had a mascot, L&B Dodge Man, for use in print ads and TV commercials. L&B Dodge Man was a superhero type with square jaw, wavy hair, a skintight yellow suit and a cape. He looked like a blond Superman...so much so that DC comics sent the Rabid Corporate Lawyers with their cease-and-desist notices. L&B Dodge Man had to go away. You don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't create an advertising mascot that looks even remotely like him if you want to stay out of court.

DC Comics is owned by Time-Warner, who also own Looney Tunes.

For this reason my coyote's company will be called Apex or Summit or something like that. Not Zenith. Zenith is already trademarked. And his name is Alex. No way in hell I'm calling him Wiley.

Excellent work, Woollybear!

Pterofan: Hope those veggies help.

Keithy: Great job getting words down amidst hectic life stuff. Hope things are a bit calmer now.

Layla: If you find a way to cull chores, please do share. Hope you had a fun run. I had to drag myself kicking and screaming this morning.

Cindyt: Woo for words!

Taylor: Nice work.

My right hand was killing me today so had to take it slow … four pages in the end. It seems my biggest opponent right now isn’t the story but my bloody RSI.

Congrats on Writing Something today Cindy
Nice work, Taylor
way to go with that editing, bear
Ptero, I’m really feeling motivation problems, lately, too. (“Apex” is briyyant. I was hoping his name would be William. You know, his friends could call him Willy…)
April, I write by hand, and I tend to tense up. I remember getting pain when I was a kid, but my main problem is tension in my shoulder & arm. I have found some different things that help - changing my position (how I'm sitting, my posture) is a big one, and becoming aware of the tension, & then stopping, and relaxing the tense parts is another. I have *terrible* writing. I keep hoping that if I can relax more my writing will get better.)






Day 28


WIP - added words
R/SC - housemate phone call; cookies (Oreos this time)
BP/$$ - job, 11 hours

Word Count 986

Research - Tall wildflowers that bloom from late March through the summer in the Southeastern part of the United States. (I chose tall buttercups and purple spears, and red columbine. Raptor birds.

Woolly - Congrats on the trim and shaping up.

April - Here’s to more indurance.

Layla - I don’t write by hand anymore because my penmanship is chicken scratch. WTG on the words.

Wrote about a page and half. You know what I like about court scenes? Dialogue. All of those nice paragraphs that make the pages fly by, even if the word count is lower.

Day 28 - 186 words
Day 29 - a little less than half a page longhand, so a little less than 200 words

This morning my heroes, trying to rescue their woman from the wolf shifter, got surprised and subsequently knocked on their asses by the vampire. Nobody but the readers knew the vampire and the shifter had teamed up. The human hero had a moment of panic when the vampire started feeling up his pants, but it turns out he was just looking for the hero's car keys. The bad guys, toting the witch, escape in the heroes' truck.

Layla - I was leaning toward "Summit," but yeah, "Apex" does sound better. I have to call him Alex because I don't have any choice. When my characters tell me their names, I have to listen to them. However, "Wylie" would make a great, ironic name for the roadrunner woman. This is turning into a wonderful distraction from writing the book. I don't know whether to curse you or thank you.

Cindy - well done on your words and the 986. better than zero.
Wooly - yeah, chores, yuck.
Pterofan - yay, more words. I like the car keys bit.

Fishytail - 541 and 1007 words. Kaylee has swum up a long water inlet pipe and into a chemical factory. As she says, no-one expects to see a mermaid.

Dustworld - 191 and 247 words. Rodney and Etia have arrived in another country and are buying ammunition. News of the coup and Etia going missing has followed them, along with a sketchy description.

non-writing

buying stuff... and more stuff.

keep at it, swimming, sailing, etc.

Cindy, my writing is so bad. And I wonder why I can’t improve it. I’ve tried writing the circles, & the straight lines. But I have to go so slow to make it look nice. (And even then after about 10 lines it starts to degenerate) Congrats on the 986
Sounds like fun work, Taylor
Ptero, just go ahead and curse. I’ll be here, a-cacklin’. Congrats on those words
Great work, Keithy. (I’m wondering if I’ll get to go swimming this season…)








Day 29 - whew slept in today (up at 5:57) but had some kind of nice half-awake dream with riding my bike and going to some kind of festival, so that was worth it.


WIP - added words
R/SC - chores, groceries
BP/$$ - job, 6 hours

Drive by.

Worked the chapters. Another 1000 words back into them. Better. Better. More coherent.

Moving on. May is a success. Bring on June.

Word Count 265

Research - Grizzly bears. Timber rattlers. Year written and meaning of the song Green sleeves (1580, likely King Henry VIII wrote if as a result of Anne Boleyn rejecting his seduction.)

Keithy - WTG on the word counts. I’ve been buying stuff and more stuff too.

Layla - I think my problem is all the years I’ve typed instead of handwriting and age. I dreamed I was rooming with a friend and Donald Trump. Just shoot me. WTG on some words.


I mostly edited, completing Chapter 35 and some of 36.

Fell off the wagon but got back on the last few days. Had a strong start to the month and now I've begun writing with pencil and notepads and that has loosened something that was damming my creativity a bit. Something between my poor penmanship and the fluidity and marginalia I can now scribble, I have written near 10 large legalpad-sized paged by hand in the last few days. Probably only equals about 5 typed pages but I don't care. The story and the characters are coming alive and I'm anxious to see what happens again. Looking forward to participating more frequently and consistently. For now, it appears, I will be writing this novel by hand.

Anyone else change up their process to get the words out every day?

Layla: Thanks for the tips. My posture can be pretty crap … I find that if I force myself to write really slowly it can help too. My writing hasn’t changed much since when I was nine years old. Ooo, Oreos—a classic!

Cindyt: Nice word count! Also, never knew that about Greensleeves, and now I understand a line from the musical Six … so thank you for enlightening me!

Taylor: Yes to dialogue! When I get characters talking they go on for pages and pages …

Pterofan: My characters usually tell me to go look up behindthename.com.

Keithy: Excellent wordage!

Woolly: You’re on fire!

yoshi: Yup— I started writing by hand too!

6 pages yesterday, none today. Now I’m writing by hand I’m on the laptop less so my posting here is a bit more sporadic. I will try to be more consistent in June.

Wrote a page today. Had to change some stuff from the transcript because it just didn’t work as written there.

Congrats on those words, Cindy, and I won’t try to analyze your dream. I’ll send you some forgetting powder instead.
yoshi, congrats on getting some words out. For me to get the words out, I sit down with my WIP and pick up where I left off. The most important thing I do is to be glad that
I wrote, and not let myself judge anything about what I’ve done - not the quantity, not the quality. fwiw, ymmv
Always good to see you April. Glad to hear your keeping at it.
Congrats on the


Day 30


WIP - added some words
R/SC - a lot of cooking, some handwash; house cleaning, housemate visit (she's not going to take it)
BP/$$ - some sorting & tidying

Popping in to say RAH! RAH! Go team!

Another day, another page or two. Day 5 of consistent writing (by hand). Slow progress but I'd rather be motivated and write even a single page a day than stop again. Thanks for the support everyone!

Didn’t get nearly as much written as I wanted. Found a wounded duckling on the side of the road as we took our evening walk. Despite all our efforts it died this morning. Lack of sleep and all the bad news from elsewhere really amped up the resistance factor.

Word Count 505

Research - 17th Century books (MacBeth, The Witch and the Blackbird Pond, Pilgrim's Progress, The Pretty Goldilocks, Cinderella) Antique bookends (silver elephants proping the books up with their trunks.

April - Glad to help. I love Greensleeves and used to sing it so loud and bad that my tuxedo cat would bite my nose.

Layla - I had another one. Shoot me twice. Congrats on adding some words.


I did a buncha editing on Dress Her in Chameleon and added wordage to A Deadly Spill of Scarlet

Day 30 - 216 words
Day 31 - a couple lines over half a page. At least 200 words

Finished the kidnap scene. Tomorrow we switch to the witch's POV as she finds herself trapped in a truck with the two bad guys who will. Not. Stop. Bickering.

As for me, I'm treating myself to an unexpected Tom Hiddleston film festival. Kong: Skull Island just wrapped; now it's switch channels for Thor: Ragnarok. Thank you, Tom, you got me out of yard work this afternoon.

And that'll wrap it up for May. See you in June!

Day 31 - we made it, folks, on to June!


WIP - added words
R/SC - trip to the woods
BP/$$ - job, 7hrs; did work on two Dreaded Tasks