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Inspired by and appreciative of @jennashworth, I've adopted her #100DaysOfWriting to break (I hope!) a long, frustrating spell of wheel-spinning. bit.ly/2jVJu4u
Here goes:
Here goes:
Day 1/100 (yesterday) — Several sloppy paragraphs in which a mug of coffee is dropped... on purpose! #100DaysOfWriting
Day 2/100 in which a subway train is taken out of service, with consequences. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 3/100, in which a luncheon platter is pillaged and things finally get underway. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 4/100, in which nothing much happens that is likely to survive revision. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 5/100, in which I struggle to write my protagonist out of a room and resist temptation to start over with a different POV. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 6/100, in which my protagonist has been assigned a silly name then rewritten in 3rd person for a couple of pages just to find out. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 7/100, in which a very unpleasant encounter is had with some very large dogs. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 8/100, in which a chair remains broken and an Easter egg is hidden in honor of @ambernoelle. #100DaysOfWriting
@ambernoelle Day 9/100, in which a man's eggish head proves distracting, and the narrator has a thought on the protagonist's behalf. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 10/100, in which dead birds feature (RIP) and a victory may yet prove Pyrrhic. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 11/100, in which there's a mission, should he choose to accept it, and frankly he has to because otherwise he'd get fired and my novel would end rather early. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 12/100, in which without expecting to I have typed the troubling phrase "also trafficked in exotic urines" for the first time in my life. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 13/100, when I was late getting to it and wasn't at my best by then but sometimes that's how it goes. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 14/100, in which not one but *two* characters sneak naps at work. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 15/100, in which our hero becomes a man of near-action. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 16/100, in which the line between dopey dumb luck and guile appears quite thin indeed. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 17/100, in which a chicken is eaten in sloppy detail because readers like @kfan demand that level of gustatory attention. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 18/100, in which a character's comeuppance is set in motion and I realize I must rewrite and revise to make said comeuppance more deserved when it comes. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 19/100, in which an unintended digression takes us on a tour of the chest cavity of a large animal carcass but then things get back on track. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 20/100, in which a set piece occurred with a rat and a chicken once I finally stopped procrastinating and set myself to it. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 21/100, in which I didn't get to it until late in the day and it wasn't my best work but I think a few bits will end up worth keeping. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 22/100, in which a cat declines a late night offer of leftover meatballs so as you can tell things are getting quite Literary™ indeed. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 23/100, unable to get into my morning headspace away from home before spending slow, snowy hours in a car, I only managed to play with a new approach to an opening scene. Not much done but something. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 24/100, and our unfortunate protagonist is trapped in an elevator but not at all in the usual way. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 25/100, when even tinkering with a few paragraphs for a while between back to back to back meetings felt like stolen time but now I'm going in for more. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 26/100, and my earlier pages aren't quite doing what I've now realized they need to be doing so I can move forward, and I'm revising them into a better foundation. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 27/100, in which one thing leads to another and the new thing is just as unfortunate for our hero as the last thing because if it wasn't we wouldn't have novels at all. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 28/100, which was yesterday, and news from NZ made it hard to do more than poke at the manuscript in a noncommittal, what does this dumb novel matter kind of way. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 29/100, when a naughty politician and his companion get a compromising surprise, and people with strong opinions flap newspapers at one another. (What the heck is this novel becoming?!) #100DaysOfWriting
Day 30/100, and I've inadvertently written in a riff on an old Simpsons scene as well as the line "It was like being dead in all the best ways." #100DaysOfWriting
Day 31/100 and surprise, we've gone on safari. But not for long. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 32/100, in which things are about to get very bloody so I'd better not eat before trying to finish this scene. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 33/100, in which things turn rather "Tibert the cat meets a priest" for one character and frankly it's worse than even he deserves, but what can you do? #100DaysOfWriting
Day 34/100, when I got to it late but finished off a big scene that left a whole lot of blood on the floor and I'm not sure who in the novel is responsible for cleaning that up. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 35/100, in which I count this from earlier because while the day didn't give me a chance to come back for more "writing," I did some very helpful planning, prepping, and taking stock. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 36/100, in which the media take an interest in recent events and our hero trades one antagonist for another (because it's always something in novels, isn't it?). #100DaysOfWriting
Day 37/100, in which circumstances are becoming quite picaresque and a new character turns out to be not who I thought she would be. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 38/100, and I've written a scene that moves some things forward and isn't quite an infodump but gosh is it dull in its first draft. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 39/100, in which our hero is issued a uniform and some dangerous tools so you know things are serious now. (He also takes a bit of a nap.) #100DaysOfWriting
Day 40/100, when the plot (such as it is) involves a bit of provocative Photoshopping but my efforts to avoid the branded word "Photoshop" in the story makes it read awkwardly. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 41/100, with more poking and prodding at skeletal sections than actual writing; it may be time to revise myself back to this point before moving forward. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 42/100, in which a reporter I didn't yet know was a character in this novel performs high octane scenes of scrolling through microfilm, while I look up the difference between fiche and film. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 43/100, featuring clandestine use of photocopiers and some activists whose ideology could do with a bit more thinking through both from them and from me. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 44/100, in which astral projection goes nowhere. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 45/100, and fiddling about with some of the words I already have instead of adding new words is going to have to count because my brain is a Monday night mush. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 46/100, in which the possibility of urban falconry emerges, and the tendencies of fox scat are explored. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 47/100, in which a stiletto heel lives up to its name but don't worry, the victim was already dead. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 48/100, when a press conference goes either wonderfully right or terribly wrong depending on where you're sitting. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 49/100, and if I'm not mistaken that's the first tarring and feathering scene I've ever written. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 50/100, halfway to whatever this is becoming. #100DaysOfWriting 
Day 51/100, and a character may or may not have been named after an unfortunate sports car and that's the least of her problems. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 52/100, writing a section that bridges from one phase of the story to the next and I already know it's expository filler that won't survive the cuts of revision. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 53/100, in which things come to a head and other things hang overhead and some things even fall on someone's head just a little. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 54/100, in which an elaborate trap has been set and now waits to be sprung, and only the schlimazel could fail to see what's coming when I write it tomorrow, poor sap. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 55/100 and someone has fallen down an elevator shaft this morning, but not very far so maybe it's more or less fine. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 56/100 and alas, some well-intended gunplay has gone awry. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 57/100, in which a corned beef sandwich is shared across species and provokes, for some reason, a melancholy monologue about mustard. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 58/100, in which an unforeseen gaggle of drunken wealthy revelers make a mess of everything. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 59/100, and a party that started in bubbly has ended in blood but don't worry, I'm sure all the right people will be paid off to hush it all up. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 60/100 and it looks like the jig is about up for our protagonists with only the winding spring of denouement to follow. (Unless I get distracted again and they digress.) #100DaysOfWriting
Day 61/100, in which several pages of dull, compressed exposition get us from this part of the story to that part of the story and will need to be redone at some point. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 62/100, kind of a dud; I poked at some sentences but they didn't hop as high as I'd hoped they would and then work swallowed my day. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 63/100, and there was much skeletal stage setting for the grand finale which, in its first draft, will probably be more of a bland finale but I hope will get there in revision. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 64/100, and with two scenes left (one big, one small) I'm dragging my feet because what comes next is rereading this indiscriminate pile to see what it's worth. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 65/100, and I've banged out a sloppy Swiss cheese first attempt at the novel's over the top penultimate scene. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 66/100, and an incident involving two badly aimed guns has brought things just about to a close. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 67, and with a clumsy attempt at an ending this deliberately short, speedy novel is now a full draft. A terrible, terrible draft. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 68/100, time to start retyping the manuscript from the top as its first revision (thanks due to @alexanderchee for the suggestion). #100DaysOfWriting
Day 69/100, retyping continues apace. Haven't changed much yet so either I'm not judging harshly enough or else the opening pages aren't where the problems are hiding. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 70/100, light typing in the final days of the semester. Have promised myself I'll make up for it after the grading is done. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 71/100, and things are emerging in the retyping though it's not nearly as much fun as the wild energy of making things up in the first madcap draft. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 72/100 was yesterday and the work went on, but I guess I forgot to say so. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 73/100 was yesterday and my internal calendar is apparently confused, but revision continues. Must confess I'm not enjoying retyping as a way of revising. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 74/100 was yesterday and I didn't get much actual writing done beyond fiddling about trying to generate more revision momentum (also did a heap of end-of-semester grading). #100DaysOfWriting
Day 75/100 (I think that's got me caught up?) when I thought I might move over to Scrivener to continue revising, but the software had other ideas and refuses to open. Does submitting a support ticket count as writing? #100DaysOfWriting
Day 76/100, and revision/retyping still isn't nearly as much as drafting but it's happening all the same. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 77/100 and I chaired a long faculty meeting then attended two others so for today a little while spent poking at the manuscript with a melted brain totally counts. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 78/100 and after struggling to find the fun for a couple revision days I went back to the opening chapter, slimming it down and speeding it up in hopes of hitting the tenor I want to move the novel toward. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 79/100, and a bit of unremarkable revision happened unremarkably plus I had some ideas for tomorrow. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 80/100 (yesterday) and my ongoing inability to open @ScrivenerApp or get a service response highlights how helpful it is (was?) for revising with intense focus on individual chapters in isolation. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 81/100, in which some stuff that happened in the first draft happens a bit better now, hopefully, after some revision but not as well as it will after more revision. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 82/100 and a character who previously reminded everyone else of an egg now suggests a chicken instead so yes, things are hatching out in revision. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 83/100 and I think what this novel really needs are more rambling, ridiculous digressions, and I'm not even joking. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 84/100 and revision is moving along nicely now, knock on wood. Retyping the whole first draft to produce the second just wasn't for me, at least not right now, but I've found my method. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 85/100, and I'm revising a section involving shocking behavior by animal carcasses and yes, this remains a ridiculous novel for which I apologize in advance to whoever is screening unsolicited submissions these days. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 86/100 was yesterday and was also commencement, after which I could barely string words together so revision was slim. Started today with a headache so we'll see how it goes. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 87/100 was yesterday and whoops, I forgot to say so, but the headache didn't ease up so there wasn't much to be said anyway. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 88/100 (I think may calendar's sorted again?) and revision added a one-sided conversation between an out of place man and an out of place bird. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 89/100, and revision is bogged down in the muddy middle of the manuscript where the novel just drags along more slowly than it (eventually? hopefully?) will. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 90/100, and after a couple days slogging through very unfortunate chapters I've arrived at the part of the first draft where the novel hit its stride. Phew. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 91/100 and gosh I'm pleased with the phrase, "at rest in its pachydermal depths," which probably means I'll have to cut it out later. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 92/100 and some parts I'd hoped were funny are indeed funny, while some parts I'd suspected were confusing are indeed confusing, but revision continues. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 93/100 and revision has inserted a hungover cardinal into one scene; the bird, mind you, not the kind in a hat. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 94/100 and I have nearly revised my way to the final boss battle, so to speak. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 95/100, and after completing a second full revision I'm going back to all the spots I flagged for expansion, alteration, or more work of some kind before the next pass through the novel. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 96/100 and I just forced my poor protagonist to be trapped in a room while two people "enjoy one another's company" a few feet away. I owe you a drink, pal; next chapter. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 97/100 and I'm getting my notes, ideas, etc from draft 2 in order before printing the manuscript to make the next revision on paper. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 98/100, and it's revision time again as I try to weave in some ideas and notes from the last read through. Characters to expand, events to develop, scenes to add, etc. And the margin note "What becomes of this rat later?" to address. #100DaysOfWriting
Day 99/100 and I'm looking for where this novel can do more in the margins, often my favorite part of a story: bit.ly/30BY5WS. #100DaysOfWriting
