Day Three

12:00 AM - 5,773. Sidetracked by the necessary planning that I’ve now adopted as a pre-chapter ritual. Get a rough outline down then just go for it. Seems to be working.

12:26 AM - 5,776. Slow going. More internet distraction. Much time spent pondering new word: hadn’tve. Had not have, being the intended contraction, though I’m not even sure had not have makes any sense as a phrase whatsoever. Decide instead to go with “wasn’t”, which cleans up the whole issue nicely. Was getting lost on some deserted, past tense backroad there. Not sure where it was leading...

12:31 AM - 5,807. Have probably used the phrase “down the hall” at a hundred times already. Wonder what percentage of the total word count those three are responsible for.

12:40 AM - 5,929. Learned the difference between eloquent and elegant, then spelled black without a ‘c’. Is this irony? I know not.

12:47 AM - 6,043. Decided to stitch the last half=page onto the end of chapter five instead of using it to start chapter six. Ideally, to increase the tension. Or something to that effect. Copped a line from Fear and Loathing, too, to end the chapter: there is no way to describe the terror I felt. Always liked that line.

6:46 PM - 6,086. Really can’t figure out, due to the whole present-tense thing, if I should be using ‘run’ or ‘ran.’ This one has always stumped me, and, of course, I never bother to look it up. I think it’s run, am pretty damn sure it’s run, but for whatever reason ran just sounds right.

6:47 PM - 6,094. Just used ‘down the hall’ again. Shit. Need to find a better way to say this.

7:11 PM - 6,301. Break time.

11:04 PM - 6,328. Almost done with tomorrow’s quota. Would like to be at 10,000 by the end of day five.

11:22 PM - 6,586. Invented new word: somehome. Was trying for ‘somehow,’ but just went all wrong.

11:24 PM - 6,593. T2 reference: check.

11:35 PM - 6,676. Starting to lose it a bit. The writing, I mean. The words aren’t coming out as effortlessly as they sometimes do. Feel like I’m working harder to find the right thing to say.