MOPNOWRIMO again Day 1 (again) (30/4/2012)

Wordcount Target: 5000, Achieved 4120

Procrastineering[1]: v. The completion of many useful but previously uncompleted tasks (usually previous victims of various forms of procrastination) in order to avoid starting on The Thing That Really Needs To Be Started, Like, Today.

So my day went like this: I need to knuckle down and write. So, a good bit of exercise might me in the mood, right? So I set on cycling into town, quietly ignoring the fact that the cycles paths all follow the rivers around here and the rivers are, well, a little bit full at the moment. Well, not so much full as let’s go all Third Reich on all the surrounding land.

flood

Yes, it really does just vanish into a watery horizon. So that took a bit longer than it was supposed to. And then I’m really, really fed up of that slow puncture that’s been bugging me for  ages but I’ve never got around to fixing, but today was clearly the day to sort that out.

Words written at this point: 24.

Also, of course, it was absolutely essential to post something about starting this project as opposed to actually doing the starting. Necessary. Oh yes.

And then there’s this other thing I’ve been meaning to do which is sign up with the local leisure centre, and then having done that, well, might as well get in a quick swim in the pool and a work-out in the gym, right, because I’ve been meaning to get fit for, oh, about ten years I think. Well my procrasinteering failed in the gym on account of not being able to get on a machine right then, but there was still the pool and a quick swim. A hundred lengths to knock some rust off those muscles, right?

I will not say how many lengths I achieved. A small number, so small that number is barely a deserving description. So my utter lack of fitness sort of saved me and some words were done after all.

They’re a bit rubbish. First draft I keep telling myself. First draft. It doesn’t matter. Also, the first thousand of them were a prologue, and since my editor is The Great Devourer of Prologues, they will certainly be cut, and in a way that’s actually helpful, since it’s much easier to accept the crapness when you’re writing crap that you KNOW is going to be cut anyway. Although I suppose I could have claimed a thousand words and done nothing and had a coffee instead.

Hmm.

Anyway, prologue and first chapter done, in which I attempt to recap on the most significant points of What Has Gone Before via the reflections of a man about to be hanged while all hell breaks loose around him. Action and recap seamlessly merged. Not a bad idea, actually. Shame about the execution.

REWRITES, I WORSHIP AT YOUR ALTAR!

I suppose I could have written another thousand words of chapter two and hit my target instead of doing this.

[1] There is also procrasturbation, it’s rather less useful cousin. But I shall primly not talk about that.

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