Word count produced from the August 1 starting line to date:
69,416 |
*last update posted on 9/28/99 (Click here for September day-by-day count.)
Go right to today's Daily Dose of Angst.
The original challenge was to produce 60,000+ words of a novel during the month of August 1999. I was joined in this dare by fellow alums of various classes of the Clarion Writers' Workshop. Participants agreed to post their word count and progress notes for all the world to see. (Peer pressure works; but the fear of total strangers thinking I'm a lazy bum is even more effective.) This was the third such dare, but my first such leap.
I ended the month of August at only 48,479 words; short of goal but still a success for me, given that this one-month total is about equal to six months' output in 1998. (Check out the millionometer.) Hence, I and some fellow darers have decided to continue, to push on through until the draft is complete, keeping ourselves honest by continuing the online journal and word counts. As I said, fear of public humiliation is deeply motivating.
Thanks to my friends and fellow writers who have been checking in and giving me the occasional word of encouragement and/or nudge to keep going. It has helped a lot to know you are looking over my shoulder, slapping my wrists if I stop typing, and cheering me forward.
My novel arises from a short story (okay, not so short: the current incarnation is over 10,000 words, and there are large parts of plot that are only hinted at--which is why it is about to become a novel) entitled "Now, That Was a Game."
Mark McGwire has been criticized for taking androstendione to enhance his strength and durability; many pitchers, including Cub phenom and 1998 National League MVP Kerry Wood, undergo so-called Tommy John surgery (named for the first player to have it) in which a tendon is transplanted from wrist to elbow; a number of players have had laser surgery on their eyes to improve their vision. What's the next step in building a better ballplayer? And the step after that?
Born on August 8, 1988, the day Chicago's Wrigley Field ended its holdout against night games and became the last major league ballpark to have lights, Jeremy Elliott entered the bigs at a time when ballplayers are enhanced--surgically, genetically, any way medicine can find to make them faster, stronger, better. But once again the Cubs were the last holdouts, playing "natural baseball," with strict limitations on medical treatments of any sort for their players.
By 2082, the Cubs and "natural baseball" are long gone. So are most of the players Elliott knew. Jamie McGrew, a young sports reporter, comes to visit Elliott in the county hospital where the old man is struggling through the last days of his life. McGrew wants to hear from someone who was there--while he still can--about the last of the naturals, a young man named Jonathan Roth, whose name spells the end of an era. He wants to know about that last game . . . but Elliott tells him much more of the story.
Read a brief excerpt from the original story.
All text on these pages copyright 1990-1999 by Pamela Hodgson. All rights reserved.
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