Welcome to the log... 📊
Logging progress on a story that feels urgent for me to tell.
By making this log public, I’m asking to be held to task if I start flatlining.
28 Jan — Word count is 67,751 words. I need an agent. Almost time to start sharing a (scream) draft.
12 Dec — Today, some important milestones:
(1) I felt brave enough to let Joel read some chapters for the first time. He hates them (lol, jk).1
(2) Crested 50,000 words. Starting to feel like something I can maybe call “draft manuscript”, if that’s not too douche-y….
(3) Got my favourite writing seat in the RadCam. So that was nice.
27 Nov — Went to a new Oxford library yesterday, the Taylorian, to try to track down the diaries of a (very) peripheral character. Success in that I found them but failure in that they contained nothing of much use… I feel so sure of my story, so certain that it must be unequivocally confirmed somewhere by some scribbling person. Looking for the smoking gun but so far only much smoke. But as they say about smoke, there’s none without, etc…
I search on. But of course I already found the smoking gun. It was the first thing I found, and what started me off on this mad investigation a year ago.
20 Nov — ONE YEAR since I kicked off this madcap adventure boring Log of my novel-writing endeavours .
Speaking of madcap adventures, Vienna, Five Trains and Vienn-again should give some sense of the great fun I’ve had personal sacrifices I’ve made in writing this book.
No, I’m not sharing any details on the book yet. All in good time. But know that I’ve done another 5,000 words in the last week with which I am inordinately pleased...
26 Oct — Nearing halfway, maybe?
9 Oct — I’m on fire. Much recent library research has filled the well to draw from and it seems there is nothing I can’t write about this story. Three new chapters.
22 September — Disaster struck. I somehow lost about two hours worth of work. Not writing, just translations, but still representative of a lot of wasted time and effort, which did not make me happy. Complete reassessment of my writing app/back-up system ensued (this is what happens when you live with a software engineer) and the upshot is that I have now sacked off Ulysses in favour of Obsidian and Joel linked my writing folder to GitHub (fancy!) so I can do manual back-ups to there, as well as automatic syncs to iCloud and Obsidian on my phone. Very cool. He even managed to transfer about 75% of my work automatically to Obsidian (the other 25% was saved in a silly place so I am moving it across manually).
Aaaaaanyway, after all this: a silver lining. The shift to Obsidian made me take a step back on my novel’s structure and I am now VERY happy with where it has landed. So that’s a good thing. Net positive, I would say.
4 September — Translations and timelines.
12 August — back from my visit to the archives. It was a fruitful trip. Some important things fell into place, gaps joined up. Holding the whole story in my head now. More details on this trip: Five Trains and Vienn-again.
22 July — Emails to archive-keepers generate success, at long last. Appointment made and soon to be kept…
July so far has seen me start to dive back into this story. It’s a long process to re-immerse. Reading compendium of first-hand accounts from my period. Finished full translation of three chapters of a key source. Emails to archivists and researchers abroad. Plans to visit next month…
June saw some important developments, necessary in the long-term for me to have the time and space to actually write this thing. See The Longest Day and No such thing as for details….
W/c 6 May — No new word count. Wading through an 800-odd word definitive book on the history of the place where the book is set. It’s wild.
W/c 22 April — 1,000 ish new words. Totals stand at: 40,182 words (for the chapters) plus 74,559 words (research).
W/c 15 April — New word count: 1,922. Still so many unanswered questions.
W/c 1 April — 36,797 words. New chapters. Lots of translation. Lots of organising. Structure starting to come together. Research total 73,474 words.
W/c 25 March — 30,791 words. Back in business. Key doc translated. Key chapter written. 💥 Fire reignited. Research total 48,980 words.
W/c 26 Feb, 4 March and 11 March — As you can probably tell, dust bunnies blowing through here…. I’m getting some time off to write soon. Quiet, but not beaten.
W/c 19 February — Spent the weekend in the Bodleian and word count is all over the shop. I’ve been disorganised — but not unproductive. A new 2,620 words in the chapters section plus 18,000+ in the research folder (translating a relevant primary source into English).
Totals stand at 29,679 words (for the chapters) plus 47,990 words (additional research).
W/c 12 February — BREAK. No work on the book whatsoever but a very nice trip with the family, of which: Death perception.
W/c 5 February —27,059 words. It looks like my word count has gone down but that’s only because I moved some stuff into a dedicated research folder that doesn’t come into the chapters/timeline word count. Separate research folder stands at 16,488 words, in addition to the 27,059 in the chapters folder...
W/c 29 January — 27,653 words. Hilary Mantel said we write novels not to tell made-up things but to tell the truth. She said: “I am not claiming authority for my version; I am making the reader a proposal, an offer.” That is *exactly* how I feel about this book I am writing.
W/c 22 January — 26,328 words, plus three hand-drawn family trees for the three main characters, not yet digitised.
W/c 15 January — 25,934 words. Some chapters starting to take shape...
2024
W/c 8 January — 23,696 words. More library time, details of which can be found in A day of one’s own. Read another primary source (diaries of a tangential character) and two books that were on my main character’s shelf.
W/c 31 December — 20,152 words. Finally, some library research time. Read some primary sources (original letters of two main characters).
W/c 11 December — 17,070 words.** Added to cumulative timeline on some ancillary characters; wrote chapter on childhood of one of the main characters; researched a very niche sport.
**The total appears to have jumped significantly this week — which is not the case. I only added about 1,000 words this week. Going forward, instead of trying to get a pure count just for chapters, I’m going to track the overall word count for the whole project. This includes timeline, research, bibliography, etc. — because it’s all relevant work. Before this week, that count was at about 16,000 words.
W/c 4 December — 9,000 words. Wrote one key scene and some intro text. Compiled long list of things to read. Really need to go to the Bodleian…
W/c 27 November — 7,500 words. Additions to cumulative timeline; character family chart-mapping; web research (thematic and geographic).
W/c 20 November — 5,800 words. Research (niche, thematic).
W/c 13 November — 5,500 words. Research (field, web, archive and interview) on three main characters and cumulative timeline.
W/c week commencing
His exact words: “Keep going.”