Hmm… are we counting weekends?  I have calculated my 100,000 words on the basis that I will do 1,000 words a day except for weekends so perhaps not.  Anyway, here I am at the start of week two.  I did an odd 90 words on Saturday morning and then today was a bank holiday – and the World Snooker final.  So I didn’t open up Write or Die today, but threw a few words into a fresh document in between frames and inched my way towards the day’s total.

I’ve just finished (which is good, because the final is getting to be awesome!) and here’s my score:

• Today’s words:   1182
• Total words:        6201

The thing is, I’ve been talking about writing a novel since I was eleven.

The thing is, I took a year off work and wrote a novel.  Call it my Villette.  It’s OK, but it’s not Jane Eyre.

The thing is, I’ve had these characters and settings and stories in my head for years and I keep noodling about them but not committing to writing them down.

The thing is, the way to write a good novel, is to write a bad novel first and then work on it.

So here’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to write a thousand words – probably a thousand bad words (not BAD words, you understand – I’m not going to write a list of swearwords.  Just unfiltered words) every day.  I’m going to write a thousand unfiltered, unedited, uncareful bad words every day.  For 100 days.  So by the end of 100 days I will have a really really bad 100,000 word manuscript.

And then I can do some real work.

If I take the weekends off, I’ll be finished by September 15th.  Ready?  Go!