My story, in 100 words or less

Just for fun, I ran Microsoft Word's "autosummarize" tool over the 50,000 words of fiction that I just finished writing, to see how a computer-automated reader would sum up the story in 100 words or less.

I think you'll agree that the Cliff's notes edition of this story is destined to be hugely popular. Here are the key "sentences" that Word picked out for me:

*
Meet Professor Toulos

Professor Toulos stirred his soup thoughtfully.

"I'm Professor Stephen Toulos."

"Hi Stefan."

"Stefan, hey man."

"OK, thanks Stefan."

"How is Stefan doing?"

"Hey, it's Stefan."

"No, Stefan."

Tiffany asked.

"Stefan!"

"Stefan!"

Tiffany gasped.

How did Professor Toulos know about her and Stefan being involved?

"Tiffany?"

"Professor Toulos?"

"It's me, Stefan."

"Stefan! What happened?"

"No, Stefan."

"Professor Toulos?" Stefan asked in disbelief.

"Tiffany, hi."

Professor Toulos stopped her.

"OK, Tiffany."

Stefan shouted in the professor's ear.

Stefan asked him.

Stefan paused and glared at the professor.

Toulos asked.

Professor Toulos expected that very answer.

Tiffany knew.
*

Summarized this way, it sounds much more melodramatic than I meant it to be -- feels almost like a soap opera. Of course, you still have very little concept of what actually happens in the story, which I think is why Microsoft all but dumped the autosummarize feature from its latest versions of Word.

Useless tools like this give me some reassurance that the evil computers aren't quite ready to take over the world yet.

Woo hoo

Done.

Microsoft Word counts 50,236 words. NaNoWriMo's website counts 50,339. But let's not dicker over 103 words. The important point is: it's more than 50,000. Feels pretty good, I must say.

There's still work to do to make this a complete story. It's probably 90% complete. (Of course, that's a first draft, a very rough first draft. Once that's finished, there'll be more than a little rewriting to do.)

It's been fun to feel like a writer for a month, instead of just some guy who claims to like writing but doesn't have the time or motivation.

For now, I'm gonna take a break and celebrate with some Famous Amos cookies. Thanks for cheering me on, everybody. And thanks to Meaghan for taking several double shifts of caring for Logan while I wrote.

Must... get... sleep

Writing is hard work, apparently, even when you get to just make up all the details -- or maybe especially when you just make up everything.

I had envisioned myself writing through the night and finishing up before Saturday morning dawned, but after writing 11,000 words today I am just a little tired. (It's good tired.)

I am happy to report this long day of writing has brought me up to 47,000 words to date, which means I need a measly 3,000 more on Saturday. Psshaw.

Well, seriously, it might be a little tricky. Throughout the contest, weekends have been the most difficult time for me to write because Logan is home all day. He demands quite a lot of attention, and he's cool enough that I'm happy to give it to him. But it does mean that I have a hard time getting anything else done.

So... I'll be back in a few hours, refreshed and ready to top the big 5-0-0-0-0, I hope.

For those of you actually interested in the story and not just my word count, I have realized without a doubt that the story I have begun telling will require more than 50,000 words to finish. I don't know how many yet, or how long it will take me to finish it, but it will not be finished when I hit 50,000 words tomorrow. But soon after, I hope.

Good night.

The final sprint

Let the countdown begin. I am now about 40 hours away from my personal deadline in the NaNoWriMo contest -- midnight Saturday.

If there's good news for me, it is that I have kept a pretty good pace in the last week, adding 13,000 words since I updated you all last Friday. The bad news, though, is that I had not maintained that weekly average all along. Here I sit with 36,000 words in front of me, which means I have to write 14,000 today and tomorrow. Zounds.

Well, I suppose I should get started. Recall that I have scheduled to take the day off from work today to write. Is that a sad way to use a vacation day? Maybe, but sometimes in life a man just has to set a completely arbitrary goal for himself and then skip out on work to get as close as he can to accomplishing it.

So off I go to write. Wish me luck.

Down but not out... and something to read

Ladies and gentleman, as you have probably guessed because of my silence of the past week, I have fallen terribly far behind in my NaNoWriMo schedule. Last weekend was really busy with non-writing activities, and much of this week I have been an unmotivated slug. Excuses, excuses.

Point is: here I am only eight days away from my personal deadline, and I have just crossed the 23,000 word mark. (The goal is 50,000, remember.) Yikes.

I do plan to make a comeback, although it's going to be tricky. I might have to pull a few late nights, a la the days of college newspapering.

Well, instead of an excerpt from my writing, today I recommend you read this really interesting social commentary article from Vanity Fair on the rise of cute culture. It will make you laugh and feel a little sick to your stomach.