Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
29 October 30 October 31 October 1 November	Second draft of “Palmer’s Folly”	2,019 typed words.	Pelikan P1 Parker 75 Pelikan M30 Sheaffer Pop	Herbin Bleu Nuit Diamine Oxford Blue Diamine Bilberry Skrip Black

A merry NaNoWriMo to all those who intent to expose themselves to that particular source of stress this year. I will pursue my usual policy of continuing to write through the month at my own pace, but to those who think they can manage a novel in four weeks, I offer a hearty bonne chance!

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Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
15 October 16 October 17 October 18 October	First draft of “Johnson’s Folly.” Second draft, now “Palmer’s Folly”	18 manuscript pages. 846 typed words.	Pelikan 120 Pelikan M30 Pelikan 25 Pelikan P1	Pelikan Brilliant Brown Diamine Bilberry Waterman Florida Blue Herbin Bleu Nuit

Birthday Fun Extension

I mentioned Buster Keaton’s birthday was yesterday.  Well, here’s what someone with more resources than I produced to mark it:

Today’s pen: Pelikan M30
Today’s ink: Diamine Bilberry

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Sheaffer Targa Pelikan M30 Parker Duofold TWSBI Classic	Skrip Black Diamine Evergreen Herbin Bleu Nuit Diamine Oxford Blue	2125 words typed (long weekend)

Also, here’s a thing that happened this week:

Which is encouraging in two contradictory ways.  The first is obvious enough– oh boy, halfway done!

But… am I, really?  Remember, the gauge is based on an estimate of the word count based on a comparison of previous projects’ first draft page counts to final word counts.  “Estimate” can be accurate, or not.  So, let me run something by you.  When I finished the most recent bout of typing, I closed my manuscript and held a ruler up to it.  When gently compressed, it is a stack of paper roughly 3 cm tall.  The sticky-note which indicates where I left off is about 1 cm from the top.

…so I may be more in the order of 33% finished.  Which is great in terms of what the final word count may be; possibly as much as 100,000, a much more genre-appropriate weight (in as much as this thing fits a genre– closest to horror, although… have I mentioned this?… there is a tendril extending into the camp of detective fiction).  Wonderful!  Fantastic!

Those who know my capacity for dashing cold water on my own head will already have noticed the other hand presented by this second encouragement, though– I have been speaking of an estimated finishing date sometime in the first half of February.

Estimated.

It begins to look as if I’m in for a longer haul….

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Pelikan M30 OMAS Arte Italiana TWSBI Classic Sheaffer Targa	Diamine Evergreen Diamine Bilberry Diamine Oxford Blue Skrip Black	2,297 words typed

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Parker Duofold TWSBI Classic Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Pelikan M30	Herbin Bleu Nuit Diamine Oxford Blue Herbin Lie de Thé Diamine Evergreen	2,021 words typed

I notice a couple of things.  Yesterday was the start of NaNoWriMo, and tomorrow is the anniversary of my first word on paper for this novel.  There’s a connection, of course, because I arbitrarily set the start of the latter to co-incide with the former, and then buggered up my own timing slightly.  I continue to be pleased that I said NawNoHeyNo to the prospect of trying to finish in a month, because that expectation would have me feeling like a colossal failure by now.

The other thing I notice is that my word count for the week is low, thanks to the Hallowe’en thing I did over on my other front.  Not colossal failure, but it’s not helping the cause; I believe I’ll be doing some extra work tonight and tomorrow to advance things.  All the same, very nearly half-done the current draft, so the nebulous early- to mid-February finish line remains in place.

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Pelikan M30 Parker 50 TWSBI Classic Sheaffer Targa	Diamine Evergreen Skrip Black Diamine Oxford Blue Pelikan Violet	3,111 words typed

A small item of note this week:

Yes, that cat is startled that I’ve passed the hundred-page mark in my efforts, as am I.  I’m also fairly pleased that this falls at the point I’m at in the story, because it means that I am very likely to end up with a longer word-count than the first-draft projections indicated.  And that means that I won’t be devastated when I am told by an editor that great dripping chunks of it have to go, because even with necessary surgical reduction it won’t be reduced to something too small for a publisher to consider.  I hope.

Also, about that cat– the image is a tiny segment of a seasonal desktop wallpaper offered by the artistic genius whose serialized works appear here.  She offered it to her Patreon supporters, so if you want to see the whole wonderful thing you’ll have to consider supporting an artist.

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Pilot Vanishing Point Parker 50 Pelikan M30	Herbin Lie de Thé Montblanc Royal Blue Skrip Black Diamine Evergreen	2,901 words typed

Hey, that’s a more productive week!  Since we’re getting close to the anniversary of this project, now is as good a time as any to announce:  This project will absolutely be finished long after we pass that anniversary.  Earlier optimism on this point was unfounded, and now that I’ve got a strong sense of my weekly output… February *mbbl*th is the likely completion date.  Not what I’d hoped, but given the tiny slice of time I can apply to the matter, I’m actually feeling pretty good about that.

Speaking of feeling pretty good, and to wrap up a slightly loose end from last week.  Doctor seen, x-rays taken, and the verdict is– if the knee is sore, put on a brace for a while, and take a mild anti-inflammatory (which most popular over-the-counter pain relief is).  No other treatment needed.  I may yet dance!

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Pelikan M30 (and a drumstick) Sheaffer Targa Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Pilot Vanishing Point	Diamine Evergreen (plus some gravy) Pelikan Violet Herbin Lie de Thé Montblanc Royal Blue	793 words typed

That’s a pretty weak showing for the week. Let me explain, and perhaps even justify.  Monday was Thanksgiving up here in the Great White North, and that meant I was paddling about the house doing important house stuff prior to heading to my in-laws’ place for the traditional attempt to eat enough to last out the whole winter.  And that meant no writing.

But wait!  There’s more!  Today, indeed even as this entry is being posted by cool and unsympathetic electronic hands, I am off to see my doctor.  You may remember that in December and then again in April I mentioned having wrenched the crap out of my knee.  Up until the last week of September, I would have told you that I was pretty much recovered from this.  Mid-way through that week, for absolutely no reason I could notice, the knee was all inflamed and painful again; no new acrobatics, no attempted heroics, not even inclement weather.  That became the point at which I allowed common sense to overcome self-destructive idiotic laziness; I made an appointment to have it looked at.

Given the intermittent use of Canada’s handling of health-care in the debate over how things might be re-arranged in the US, I’m going to talk about this astonishing delay for a moment. I will admit that the distance between making the appointment and its arrival is somewhat inconvenient, although the leg is back to being merely somewhat sore.  However, I don’t want anyone to point at this and shout, “There!  See the horrible toll TEH SOCIALIZISMS takes on those poor benighted fools in Canada!” Here’s my take on this delay–

First of all, my doctor is quite good, popular and getting to be of an age where he wants to work less than five days a week; this makes for a full calendar.  Given that the most recent injury was five months ago, I can hardly call this an emergency, and even if I did call it an emergency, it’s not an Emergency Room emergency.  I could have, if moved by relentless agony, have sat for a couple of hours in any one of a number of open clinics around the city, and have my problem seen to by a competent if unfamiliar doctor (and thus left the emergency room less burdened by dummies like me and able to concentrate on people in authentic serious emergency trouble).  The delay is the price I pay for insisting on seeing the doctor I have chosen… which we can do here in Canada, honest.

Importantly, whether I wait several hours in an ER (because triage would put me waaaaay down the list of people needing attention), a couple of hours at a clinic, or a couple of weeks while the line of many satisfied patients my doctor enjoys cycles through to me, I am not paying for it.  Yes, I am paying for it through taxes, and that’s fine with me, because I’d be paying taxes anyway, and at about the same rate if I lived in neighbouring North Dakota, the same way I’m paying for police and fire departments and all that other stuff that people forget about when they complain about taxes.  However, my experience today will include no billing– I enter, I am probed, I get medical advice on my physical state, I leave and that’s that.  If I am sent for x-rays, same deal, but with extra radiation.  If the doctor tells me to come back in a month to see how I’m getting on, then it’s the same deal again.  If I have to start a long series of treatments because he notices I have a powerful and long-simmering case of The Spon Plague, then it’s still the same deal.  Watch as carefully as you like, as no time will my wallet leave my pocket.

I think that’s a pretty good deal, and certainly worth the .  I don’t know why people in the US resist it so fiercely (other than that they’ve been convinced by the people who make money off their system that it’s the only way to roll).

This Week’s Pens	Inks	How Much Novel Progress
Mabie, Todd & Co Blackbird Parker 50 Pelikan M30 Pilot Vanishing Point	Herbin Lie de Thé Skrip Black Diamine Evergreen Montblanc Royal Blue	2,977 words typed

I applied a little thought (uh-oh) to the pace of work, and it appears I’m not going to have something to dangle in front of publishers and/or agents until late January at earliest.

Sigh.

But, as the movie said, if you rush a miracle man, you get lousy miracles.