Here we go!

Day 6
Today's word count: 3,793
Overall word count: 9,991

This blog is titled "I Wrote This Book With My Thumbs," because I am writing a book. With my thumbs.

That is not exactly true. I'm probably writing about 60-70% of the initial copy on my Chromebook. But I am doing a significant part of the writing, and a majority of the editing, on my phone. In the elevator. In the car. At work, on my lunch break. So in terms of time invested, I really am writing this book mostly with my thumbs.

I've started writing a novel, and this will be my journal of the work.

I am a 40 year old man who checks "Some College" on his job applications, but who is nonetheless a bit of an autodidact and a very solid writer. By day, I am a medical office manager and a writer of educational and advertising copy. I've never been published as a creative writer, other than a few (award-winning, to be fair) short pieces in the college literary rag years ago. I've spent much of my adult life proofreading and rewriting the work of better-educated people than myself.

For half my life, I've had novel-sized ideas brewing in my head, in various genres. I took one abortive stab at a swords-and-sorcery type fantasy novel fifteen years ago, but it never made it past a paper copy for a few friends, and it was never really finished. In hindsight, I'm actually kind of glad of that. I don't know whether or not I'm a literary late bloomer, but I know for damned sure I wasn't an early bloomer. (Perhaps I'm a non-bloomer. We'll find out.) At any rate, that shit was well-intentioned but clunky as hell. If I ever get uber-famous, too famous for its suckitude to ruin me, I will publish 1998's In the Shadow of the Gods in my anthology. Promise.

A month or two ago, I realized that I would never end up writing a novel unless I, you know, got off my ass and wrote a novel. And I realized I would never, ever, get down to the real work of writing a book unless I cut some of the easy pastimes out of my life. Almost a month ago, I deactivated my Facebook account. A week ago, I put into storage the laptop I'd been using to (re)play Oblivion. Those were my two major time sinks. I started circling the wagons.

And I started writing. On May 28th of this year, I started writing a book based on an idea I'd had for a long while, barely formed. Fueled by nothing but the desperate determination born of an early midlife crisis, and armed with little more than a lifetime of imagining, and of reading great fiction (and having read Stephen King's On Writing ten times), I've been on it.

King, a very prolific writer, writes 2000 words a day, and thinks 1000 words a day are a good goal for a starting novelist. Since starting to write, my daily word totals are:

May 28: 1,337
May 29: 1,332
May 30: 2,616
May 31: 897
June 1: 16 (I didn't write at all; just edited a few things)
Today, June 2: 3,793

Holy shit, I got a lot done today. I was full of ideas in the morning, I edited furiously on my lunch hour, and I wrote for a long time tonight. I had a lot to get out. I've thrown out some plot threads, and I have vague ideas how some are going to turn out, but I am open to whatever happens. I can't believe I've written 10,000 words of a coherent story.

I don't even know whether I will publicize this blog now, later, or after the book is done (if it gets done). But I will start blogging my progress.