Just made it at the end of the day. Went to a cold but fun Mets game at CitiField (they lost to the Nationals), made it back to the apartment at around 11:30pm and was facing down the novel again at 12:30am. Not a great time to start, but I worked it. I think I dreamt about what I wrote. Not bad, not great, I did my work, and I made my quota. Went to bed around 2am, feeling sick again this morning, and I wonder why.

Amanda (my girlfriend) was looking for a good horror novel to read, and it was depressing because there were so few to recommend to her–and the blurbs on the back of the books didn’t help any. The genre is stuck in its schlocky roots. I mean, I like those schlocky roots, but … we’re not exactly winning anyone over.

(sheepishly avoiding eye contact) … Oh, hello, didn’t see you there. Heh. How have you been?

Yes, okay, fine. I’ve been terrible. Let’s get past that to the more friendly daily celebration. Look at that word count for today, huh? Pretty nice, considering it’s not even the only thing I did today. I also saw a matinee and hung out with my girlfriend’s parents for a few hours.

Of course, I should never work so hard on a day when I do so much other stuff, because then people will just assume that such a word count is easy. The truth is that, over the last nine days, I’ve been thinking about the scenes I wrote today a lot. So today, everything sort of just popped.

I could’ve probably kept going, but it felt important to stop before all my writing turned to drivel.

In my defense, I was sick all last week (still am), but I’m finally feeling more like my old self.

I missed nine days in a row. That’s right. It’s pathetic.

Ohhhhhhh, Thursday! We meet again, and once again, I have overcome general tiredness to sit down at (literally) the eleventh hour and get some writing in before closing shop after a day of coding, therapy, Spanish class, and grocery shopping.

My recommendation of the day for anyone struggling to get in the mood to write some horror fiction? Make an iTunes playlist based on ‘If I Was Your Vampire’ by Marilyn Manson. Amazing stuff! Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Deftones, Coheed and Cambria … Just awesome stuff, I’m telling you.

It’ll get you going.

This is how we do it: one weary day at a time, with whatever tricks we can get to work for us on the day …

Okay, so I missed yesterday because of trivia and the post-trivia movie night with the roommates. Not a great excuse, because I did have an hour between work and the bar, but I used it to watch the Red Sox/Blue Jays game and have dinner. Sue me.

But tonight, wow, did I ever not want to write! Finally got back on the horse after falling asleep watching more Red Sox baseball (I know, addiction here I come, but they’re winning! I like to watch them win!), woke up at about 9pm to finally get my act in gear.

For all that, I think the scene was pretty fun. I’ve got a few great scenes lined up, I think, and I hope they’re entertaining enough because this section really could run the risk of being boring or repetitive.

Nobody likes that.

What everybody does like: another Red Sox win! Looks like they’ll sweep the series against the Blue Jays. Only top of the 9th as I write this, but Sox lead 2-0 …

Yes, yes, I made my words, but want to know what I’m really fired up about? The fact that elephants can swim sometimes up to 48km across the ocean! I’m actually blown away by this little fact, and it fills me with a lot of joy to think about these large, dusty animals (which, really, I do picture as being perpetually thirsty) swimming free.

Love it. Thanks to Ricky Gervais’s stand-up routine Out of England for the heads-up on that one.

In other news, I also love streaming MLB.tv through my PS3, which has allowed me to watch a whole bunch of Red Sox baseball over the last few days. It feels right, you know? Watching the Red Sox and writing my horror novel. Stephen King would be so proud of me.

Tomorrow comes early.

Well, I’m not entirely sure that having the ability to watch all the Red Sox games I want to helps my writing, but I was able to get another scene onto the page. It has the semblance of a dramatic form, too, but I don’t know … might be time to re-read and see how the whole thing feels. Sometimes, it can be hard to draw the emotional arcs of my characters day-to-day, especially if I’ve left them for a a couple scenes or so.

But hey–it’s all progress. All my main characters have now been briefed on the main thrust of the plot, which is just great. But I’m sneaky in that I’ve structured the story a bit bizarrely. Correct for the story, but you won’t maybe understand that entirely until you get to the end.

Or something. Blah, blah, blah.

It’s time to go watch Nightmare on Elm Street with the roommates. I’m done with the writing life for today.

… annnnnnnd, still alive!

Know what the great thing about a 500-word-a-day quota is? I’ll tell you: It’s that if you miss a day, it is remarkably easy to make up the deficit.

(Of course, if you miss a whole series of days, that’s a different story; I’m still averaging only around 220-words-a-day since I started this venture.)

Soooooo … Yes. I missed yesterday to write a silly fucking post about video games as art, because that’s more important than Daukherville, clearly.

I was trying to get Roger Ebert to re-tweet my shit in order to increase exposure to this blog. I admit it. Well … that’ll learn me. Today, I was back at the keys, pounding out the novel again. Verdict: It was far more rewarding.

No one–fucking no one–was interested in yesterday’s piece.

*Sigh*

On a positive note … Make an iTunes ‘genius’ playlist from Nirvana’s “About a Girl.” I did, and it’s playing right now, and it’s an amazing playlist.

Do I feel awesome for having a day full of work, presentations, Spanish class, grocery shopping, roommate hanging out, and STILL finding a way to make today’s quota while picking up the slack for yesterday?

Hells yeah. I feel awesome.

Today, I go to bed an accomplished man.

… And Redlaw just got a shout-out!

That’s right, I’m not even going to bother changing its name, even if I admit to dressing it up ever-so-slightly.

But the family hunting cabin is going to be featured as a secret stronghold for my good guys. And do I feel ashamed that I’m ripping off real life and a real place name?

Hell no. Redlaw is awesome. Always has been, always will be. I already used it once in “The Field,” why not use it in my magnum opus?

In other news, I fought the Tuesday night trivia shuffle and got not only my night words in (and then some!), but also my Ten-Minute Write, as well as this little post.

I hope I can keep this up. I hope it’s not too much for me. I hope it’s what it feels like: that I’m just energized, in the zone, and doing everything right.

That old familiar feeling of ‘just one more sentence…’ is starting to creep back … Like I can’t pull my head back out of that world….

Early morning dispatch, since I was too tired to post last night when I finished, but yes–I made my words.

If I hadn’t had this blog (which no one is really watching yet, but still, it feels like an honest place) or a daily quota, I think I would have frozen where I was in the story. I like to try to park downhill at the end of the day, so beginning the process the next day will be easier. Well, I stopped in the middle of something, but it was in the middle of garbage. Total phoniness, and it was a downer to come back to that.

Let me see if I can explain a little more without talking too directly about the plot.

There’s this habit of all writers I think to get characters in a jam to ramp up the tension without having any idea how to get them out of it. Then, because you do, as a writer, have absolute control, you sort of … I dunno … fudge your way through it. Maybe you don’t directly introduce a deus ex machina (although I almost did before I slapped my own knuckles), but you do start piling on the little lucky breaks for your character.

All I can say is: bleck. It’s a hideous habit, but at least now I can eventually go back and rewrite some of it to layer in reasons why my character would be able to escape at such a time. I’ll think of something, and I’ll work backward, because it was ugly.

This is what I mean when I say the reality of a story is slipping. I mean I’m doing things that I feel at the time are cheating.

Also, it was fisticuffs time in my story. Yes, that’s right. I had cops, guns, henchmen (and holy hell did they suffer from Henchmen Syndrome, where they were the ones who were there to screw the whole thing up; the only thing henchman seem good at is taking the fall (for the hero winning the fight, that is) and allowing the bad guy to retain some semblance of competence), and fisticuffs in my horror novel! Poor fucking form indeed, but you have to trust me … This is how the story must be. For better or worse, this is the novel I’m writing, and if I didn’t have all this stuff, it would be even more fake.

But I fought through all that stuff and went on to write two very emotional scenes that I hadn’t even really been expecting to be so effective. After so much bland plot and action nonsense, there is was:

Real fucking story at the end of the day.

And I wouldn’t have gotten there without the push of a daily quota. Probably would have languished in the bad feelings of the bullshit plot for another month or two, because I’d broken the story and didn’t know how to pick up the thread of it again.

Glad I forced myself to face the page. Most important thing is to just keep writing. Bad day, good day … Keep writing.