A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Hello there! I’m Tess, and you’re about to read an experiment of mine. The experiment is to see how long I can keep a decent log of my writing life, and to see whether that log has any entertainment value. It’s sort of like a captain’s log, but almost definitely less exciting. Hope you enjoy!
6/20/2019
Word count: 1965
Another epic count on a Thursday! I think the key has been my recent decision to do my word count first, before my workout. In the past, I’ve always made sure to do my workout right after my day job, first thing--the idea being that I didn’t want to wake myself up too much before I sleep. But in practice, I think the post-workout exhaustion often made it pretty hard to hit my word count goals.
I guess I’ll let you know if the new schedule starts interfering with my sleep, but so far, it’s worked out pretty well for me. Honestly, though, a lot of those “common sense” rules for how to regulate your body to optimize it for sleep...just don’t work that well for me. I think my natural rhythm is just weird, or something.
6/21/2019
Word count: 653
I don’t normally write much on Fridays, if at all. But I knew I was going to take the rest of the weekend off, and I also had a little bit more time than I often do before I headed off to a social activity--so, in between the foundation and the teal lip, I got some writing in.
I really am enjoying how much more streamlined the writing process feels this time. My partner said it sounded like I was accelerating. I’m not completely sure that’s true, but I do think the writing is coming shockingly easy to me at the moment.
Of course, now I’ll just live in terror of the moment the well goes dry. #eternaloptimist.
6/22-6/24
Took a few days off. Celebrated the release of book 2--only two months late. Went to a party at a friend’s house, and for the first time in a long time, someone other than me was the designated driver.
Also, my friend had a tetherball in her backyard. Went out back with my roommate and my partner, and we all kinda naturally gravitated toward the tetherball pole. After about half a second, I grabbed it and held it up.
“Is there a reason why I shouldn’t do this?” I asked.
I gave them about a second to answer, and when they didn’t, I tossed it, hard.
Partner and I played for maybe five minutes before I smacked it hard into his face, immediately forgot myself as I ran over to see if he was okay, and promptly spilled my beer all over myself when the rebounding ball came back and knocked the neck of my beer into my human neck.
Technically, we stopped playing right then and there. In reality, I came back a little bit later to play by myself--which I think is when I got the huge bruise on my wrist that plagued me the rest of the week. I’m such an adult.
The next day, I had a dinner party at one of my favorite restaurants, in theory to celebrate book 2...but in reality, it was just sort of about having fun. And eating a delicate mushroom wellington, with a house-made lavender soda to accompany it.
Back when I ate meat, I did love a good beef wellington, not that those were super widely available at the time. I think I ate maybe three during the course of my lifetime, one of which was on a cruise I took with my two best friends at the end of high school. Still, each time I had it, I found it delightful.
I’m sure not everyone would feel this way, but I actually like the mushroom wellington even more.
And now we get to the real reason I don’t eat meat anymore: I hate the texture. I could never stand chicken or turkey, except maybe in the form of turkey bacon, and I only seemed to like beef and pork when they were super processed. So, basically, I already avoided all meat that wasn’t cheeseburgers, pepperoni, salami, or bacon. And I’d kind of like to live longer rather than shorter, so...it seemed like a pretty good idea to cut those out entirely.
Also pigs mourn their dead. #thevegetarianrickroll :P
I’m told cat pictures appease the internet. And I have a beautiful cat.
6/25/2019
Current count: 1128
Came back from the days off feeling focused, if not quite refreshed. It’s stupid how easily social activity exhausts me now. I still feel tired after letting myself do almost nothing on Sunday but read and eat.
Still, the writing was good today.
Today was a clean-up day, so a lot of the word count comes from me adding to scenes and smoothing them out. Somewhere between editing and writing, I suppose. Part of the addition comes from an idea I had over the weekend, that I think will make a good supplement. I’ve been working out some world-building stuff that I wasn’t sure I was going to get to so soon. I think I’ll still only be hinting at it, but it’s enough of a hint that I had to make my mind up about a few things.
Apologies for the vague, but this is a spoiler free blog.
-Tess
Hey, thanks for reading! If you’re new here, and you’d like to hear updates on my writing, including these blog posts and my ongoing novel series, The Choronzon Chronicles, then click below to sign up for my email list!
Alternately, if you’ve never heard of The Choronzon Chronicles before, but you think you might check it out, you can find the first book right here: Shadow Summoner.