Today's the Day

It is November 27th, 2006. My word count stands at 48,633. I am 97.27% of the way to 50,000 words. I have a mere 1,367 words left and it will (by estimation) take 2 hours to do it.

What an absolutely crazy month. The last two times I did this were so long ago, or else so traumatic, that I can't remember the feeling very well. The first year, I was so far behind at this point that I churned out total crap in order to get to 50k (and that crap was immediately deleted after the final word count) and the second year, I was just pushing to finish a story.

This year's a little different. I feel like I'm naturally at the end of this story. Charlie Bonnet has had to put up with my clumsy puppeteering for long enough. It's time to set him free, somehow. As I've told many people, I'm not quite sure how best to do it.

So, expect to see very shortly the following things on this site:

• video footage of me typing in the 50,000th word


• continued pictures-of-the-day through the end of the month


• an html version of the excel spreadsheet that i've been using to track my progress


• the enitrety of Illinoir once finished


• a companion piece detailing my vision and ideas for this novel

The last two are the ones I truly hope you will check out. If you care to read the story, that'd be swell. I'd really like it if you'd read the story and jot down any thoughts you might have and then read the companion piece and jot down further ideas. Hopefully, someone will be able to help me make this thing a well-connected, well-defined, satisfying mystery. Someone. Somewhere. Somehow.

Off to bed. Today's the day....