Talking Shop: Eric's Writing Challenge Updates 7 and 8

Okay, so I missed last's week writing challenge update. I meant to do it. Planned to do it, but things just got away from me. 

So let's start with the writing challenge. To date, I've written approximately 42,300 words toward the writing challenge. That puts me around 48% of the way toward the 87500 goal. I wrote approximately 2700 words last week and around the same the week before. I basically hit the bare minimum goal of 500 words around 5 days each week. 

On to Rinn's Run:

Total Words: 50,600 

Chapters Completed: 27

Percentage Complete (theoretical): Approximately 51%

The last two weeks were challenging for me. Two weeks ago, I was getting battered by daily migraines. I have no idea why. I have a hypothesis that maybe I have an undiagnosed allergy to something that came into season around then, but it's entirely speculative and wholly unsupported. Yes, there are prescription medications for migraines. Yes, I have a prescription. Fun fact, you're not supposed to take it more than a certain number of times in any given week. By day three, you've generally hit that limit. There are reasons for that that I won't bore you with. More fun facts, looking a computer screen while having a migraine feels a lot like what I imagine shoving a hot needle into your eye feels like. Needless to say, it was not a productive week for me on any front. Hitting that baseline of 500 words on five days was nothing short of miraculous.

This last week was challenging because I had to try to make up for all that paying work I didn't get done the week before. Plus, I lost around two days in the middle of the week from vaccination fallout. I don't regret the vaccination, but I loathe that lost time. Hitting that baseline of 500 words five out of seven days was simply the best I could manage. 

Despite the low word count, I don't see this as a failure. Despite all those migraines, days lost to feeling crappy post-vaccination, needing to make up paying work, I'm still 5400 words closer to a finished novel. I'm still 5400 words closer to the writing challenge goal. It's not the level of progress I wanted or aspired to, but it's progress nonetheless. That is the real point of the writing challenge. It's not to smash word count goals every single week, but to make incremental progress no matter what. So, I'm taking my 5400 words and being happy about them.

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Eric Dontigney is the author of the highly regarded novel, THE MIDNIGHT GROUND, as well as the Samuel Branch urban fantasy series and the short story collection, Contingency Jones: The Complete Season One. Raised in Western New York, he currently resides near Dayton, OH. You can find him haunting obscure sections of libraries, in Chinese restaurants or occasionally online at ericdontigney.com.