Copyright © 2011 Bob R Bogle
While writing the first draft I kept a sort of diary on Facebook, recording word counts and various other minor observations. Here it is:
Bob Bogle
don't talk to me when i'm writing.
April 17, 2010 at 6:21pm - Bob Bogle 740 words.
April 17, 2010 at 8:46pm · Diana Rede What are you working on now?
April 17, 2010 at 8:57pm · Bob Bogle very new novel.
April 18, 2010 at 7:09am · Ben Northon Ah, so MBA'10 was a _research_ trip?
April 18, 2010 at 12:41pm · Bob Bogle all of being alive is always full time research all of the time. . . .for all of us.
April 18, 2010 at 4:13pm · Bob Bogle 2,459 words.
April 18, 2010 at 8:33pm · Bob Bogle chap 1 done. 4,000 words.
April 19, 2010 at 6:40pm · Bob Bogle 5,343 words.
April 20, 2010 at 8:09pm · Bob Bogle 6,097 words. must sleeeeeep!
April 21, 2010 at 8:08pm · Bob Bogle 8,970 words.
April 22, 2010 at 8:47pm · Bob Bogle 10,600 words.
April 23, 2010 at 8:35pm · Bob Bogle 12,852 words.
April 24, 2010 at 7:06pm · Bob Bogle 16,830 words. pretty good day. coulda done more, but i had to split a runaway chapter 2 into chapters 2 and 3, which required a little backtracking and rewriting. almost done w chap 3, but sleep is more important right now.
April 25, 2010 at 8:59pm · Bob Bogle 19,742 words.
April 26, 2010 at 6:47pm · Bob Bogle 20,455 words. a day w a few complications. rats!
April 27, 2010 at 8:02pm · Bob Bogle 21,917 words. slightly misleading. making transcripts of voice recordings, radically pruning, editing, adapting to fiction, etc. not "writing" as one might think of it.
April 28, 2010 at 7:39pm · Bob Bogle 23,729 words: the good news. the bad news: essentially no sleep today.
April 29, 2010 at 8:37pm · Bob Bogle 25,099 words _and_ got a little sleep today. yipee!
April 30, 2010 at 8:35pm · Bob Bogle 27,074 words, just beginning chap 6.
May 1, 2010 at 8:38pm · Jeff Knowles that's like an insane number of words dude...wish I could focus. i'm not talking to you just typing
May 2, 2010 at 11:51am · Bob Bogle i like to think of it as a channeled obsession.
May 2, 2010 at 2:58pm · Jeff Knowles Yah I think I'm down with that concept. Better than the unchannel'd ones.
May 2, 2010 at 3:23pm · Bob Bogle 29,076 words. had to pause to do a little bit of research (concerning geology of the ozarks), which always slows one down. . . .but i'm quite happy to have written 2,002 words today. next stop little rock, by way of the battle of pea ridge.
May 2, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle 29,578 words. my lowest per diem word count so far, but a great, great deal of research had to be done today concerning the movements of the 9th iowa volunteer infantry, and it all has substantial ramifications for the rest of the novel. . . .some day, God willing, you'll see. . . .
May 3, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 30,809 words, and still not in little rock. woulda got more done today but had to break for dinner.......well, this coming week, beginning tomorrow.........
May 4, 2010 at 8:31pm · Bob Bogle yay: 32,097 words. finally made it out of little rick and on the way east!
May 5, 2010 at 10:01pm · Bob Bogle uh, rock.
May 5, 2010 at 10:01pm · Bob Bogle 33,727 words. my clock's still upside down & can't think clearly, so gonna call it a day. abt half way through chap 7 and just crossed the mighty mississippi.
May 6, 2010 at 6:45pm · Bob Bogle 35,860 words. down thru clarksville and on the doorstep of vicksburg. tomorrow will finish chapter 7.
May 8, 2010 at 12:02am · Bob Bogle 38,372 words. how to write abt vicksburg w/o making it a history lesson?
May 8, 2010 at 11:50pm · Adam Mieczyński you're a machine with a heart transplant, methinks. Try not to go the way of Walter Scott and the like. I hate those historical digressions, totally ruins the immersion.
May 9, 2010 at 4:07am · Bob Bogle yeah. good advice, but idk how well i can follow it on 1st draft. w this novel seems i 1st have to build the house before i tear out all the walls to remodel it. hold my feet to this fire w this advice in subsequent drafts if you please, however. . . .the ice berg metaphor is also appropriate. i feel like i must explore much of the mass that's hidden away under the waves b4 i can edit it all out again, firm in the knowledge that, nonetheless, it is there. . . .
May 9, 2010 at 5:31am · Bob Bogle 40,286 words. spent a good deal of time consulting vicksburg resources today, but also did a fairly decent job, i think, of minimizing the depositional tone, so. . . .would have liked to have written more, but this is a pretty good compromise.
May 9, 2010 at 9:06pm · Bob Bogle 42,858 words. this has not been an easy day for writing, but the effect achieved is good, i think. with luck i'll be out of vicksburg tomorrow.
May 10, 2010 at 11:12pm · Bob Bogle 44,341 words. coming in to nola.
May 11, 2010 at 6:56pm · Bob Bogle 46,601 words. strolling through the streets of new orleans. a niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice part to be writing.
May 12, 2010 at 8:10pm · Bob Bogle 47,247 words. gr. garden district history, architecture.
May 13, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 49,152 words. sorry to have to stop now, but. . . .
May 14, 2010 at 7:59pm · Bob Bogle 50,179 words. yay, 50k+. um, all that jazz.
May 15, 2010 at 7:58pm · Bob Bogle 51,435 words. lots of research today; maybe less tomorrow.
May 16, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle 52,331 words. mostly cleaning up some loose ends. outside complications. . . .
May 17, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle 53,815 words. chap 10. . . .
May 18, 2010 at 7:22pm · Bob Bogle 55,121 words.
May 20, 2010 at 11:09pm · Bob Bogle 55,892 words.
May 21, 2010 at 6:56pm · Bob Bogle 56,490 words.
May 22, 2010 at 9:42pm · Bob Bogle 58,265 words.
May 25, 2010 at 1:15am · Bob Bogle 58,784 words.
May 26, 2010 at 7:56pm · Bob Bogle 59,023 words. tomorrow....................
May 27, 2010 at 8:24pm · Bob Bogle 59,948 words. started chap 11.
May 28, 2010 at 8:18pm · Bob Bogle 61,481 words. much better.
May 29, 2010 at 8:17pm · Bob Bogle 62,464 words. pausing to organize notes....
May 30, 2010 at 8:52pm · Bob Bogle 62,778 words. >:^[
June 1, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 63,909 words. sloggin' thru wet concrete.
June 4, 2010 at 11:26pm · Diana Rede ?
June 5, 2010 at 10:33am · Bob Bogle 64,498 words as of yesterday. sometimes, diana, it flows. sometimes you're struggling forward against the storm surge. last few weeks have beeen disrupted by various outside influences. i have some reason to hope i broke through that s...tuff yesterday and can now start getting back on track.
June 6, 2010 at 6:23am · Diana Rede O so dinner might be out of the ? thought we should catch up...
June 6, 2010 at 7:55pm · Bob Bogle of course not, my friend! food is always a good idea. did you have anything specific in mind?
June 6, 2010 at 8:01pm · Bob Bogle 66,957 words. enough for today. now. . . .on to alabama!
June 6, 2010 at 8:05pm · Bob Bogle 67,808 words.
June 8, 2010 at 5:41am · Bob Bogle 68,336 words.
June 9, 2010 at 2:38am · Bob Bogle 70,844 words.
June 10, 2010 at 8:03am · Bob Bogle 72,181 words. shifting emphasis to mid-60s. (remember the mid-60s?)
June 10, 2010 at 6:47pm · Bob Bogle 72,651 words. still recalibrating. it's a long road from new orleans to civil rights.
June 12, 2010 at 7:13pm · Bob Bogle it's just a cheap psychological trick for my simple brain to keep up motivation. beyond that it has no meaning whatsoever. it must be hoped that the final word count is significantly less than that of the first draft.
June 12, 2010 at 7:41pm · Bob Bogle 73,380 words. made some minor but important modifications to a few earlier chapters.
"Anyone seen that danged old Yazoo and Delta Railroad?" he said, but no one answered him. He shrugged and climbed in last, muttering: "Don't say I never... warned you when your train gets lost."
June 14, 2010 at 8:37pm · Bob Bogle 74,070 words.
June 15, 2010 at 8:32pm · Bob Bogle 74,803 words. montgomery.
June 19, 2010 at 1:34am · Bob Bogle 76,260 words. almost in birmingham, and irritated in abt 10 different ways. more eager to reach georgia than you can possibly imagine.
June 20, 2010 at 12:11am · Bob Bogle 76,936 words. lost a large chunk of what i wrote yesterday; didn't mind too much as i didn't care for it. rapidly reconstructed what was best and pressed on....night in birmingham & nearing the end of chap 13.
June 20, 2010 at 10:12pm · Bob Bogle 78,847 words. starting chap 14.
June 22, 2010 at 12:03am · Bob Bogle 80,249 words.
June 23, 2010 at 12:04am · Bob Bogle 80,909 words. took a few days collecting and preparing notes. the civil rights stuff is very difficult; probably the hardest part of the whole shebang. today mostly inserting the occasional sentence or phrase throughout the earlier chapters. probably this seems pretty strange. . . .
June 26, 2010 at 7:41pm · Bob Bogle 81,337 words.
June 27, 2010 at 7:55pm · Bob Bogle 83,418 words. most of birmingham is done.
June 28, 2010 at 7:52pm · Bob Bogle 83,787 words. and here we go again. . . .
July 1, 2010 at 4:21am · Bob Bogle 84,246 words.
July 2, 2010 at 2:43am · Bob Bogle 85,477 words & across the border.
July 3, 2010 at 1:05am · Bob Bogle 87,643 words.
July 3, 2010 at 9:46pm · Bob Bogle 88,888 words.
July 5, 2010 at 7:28am · Bob Bogle 89,971 words.
July 6, 2010 at 5:10am · Bob Bogle 92,431 words. interesting....going to have to add one more (short) unexpected chapter abt atlanta.......unfortunately, must call it a day to start getting ready for another trip.....i do hope to be able to continue working while we're in seattle, though prob at a much-reduced pace.
July 6, 2010 at 5:37pm · Bob Bogle 93,687 words. back from seattle. better get yourself together darlin', join the human race.
July 15, 2010 at 1:42am · Bob Bogle 94,596 words. plus some more notes that will comprise actual text later.....anyway, i should do some reading, or watch a dvd, or something.
July 15, 2010 at 10:22pm · Bob Bogle 95,967 words. atlanta nightfall. murder & decadence.
July 17, 2010 at 1:19am · Bob Bogle 97,602 words.
July 17, 2010 at 11:16pm · Bob Bogle 98,749 words. research mode & in urgent need of a mindless movie or something. zany doings atop stone mountain in 1915. ugh.
July 18, 2010 at 9:51pm · Bob Bogle 101,081 words. reconstruction blues.
July 19, 2010 at 8:45pm · Bob Bogle 101,446 words. worked all day on the book though the #s don't show it........ug. all too soon back to work......well, i did meet my goal of breaking through the 100k word barrier.
July 20, 2010 at 9:30pm · Bob Bogle 102,444 words. uh, that would be more or less abt 480 pages.
July 21, 2010 at 8:03pm · Bob Bogle 102,640 words. pretty poor showing. reading abt the leo frank/mary phagan case.
July 22, 2010 at 8:11pm · Bob Bogle 103,696 words. almost to stone mountain.
July 23, 2010 at 8:03pm · Bob Bogle 104,575 words, and day 100 of this novel.
July 25, 2010 at 8:20pm · Bob Bogle 105,690 words. ah, unfortunately, too sleepy to go on today.
July 28, 2010 at 7:04pm · Bob Bogle 107,076 words.
July 30, 2010 at 1:56am · Bob Bogle 108,409 words.
July 31, 2010 at 12:04am · Bob Bogle 110,807 words.
August 2, 2010 at 6:45pm · Bob Bogle i've spent a week re-immersing myself in savannah and scribbling occasional notes and additional material for previous chapters, and pausing briefly to write an unrelated story. preparing to resume writing-proper on the novel, soon. . . .perhaps i'll upload some interesting images of savannah i've come across on line. it's important to get this part of the story reasonably right. . . .
August 13, 2010 at 6:17am · Bob Bogle 120,062 words. after writing the long walk, i've spent several days reviewing a lot of divergent thoughts and notes and compressing, reconciling, and distilling them, making my word count shorter and shorter, so progress to the 120k mark ...has been slow and almost asymptotic, but finally i've arrived. approaching the end of chap 18, i think. the longest chapter at (so far) 12,858 words. the thing is that i'm not really writing the novel right now but a pre-novel, in which i'm trying to let the characters grow organically w/o me dictating who they are, and also i'm trying to figure out what the whole setting is about. i am getting there, but the novel itself must eventually grow out of whomever these characters become. so perhaps it's like writing forwards now, and later everything will be rewritten in reverse. . . .something like that. it's maybe hard to understand if you haven't done something like it. sure. i don't really understand it myself.
August 24, 2010 at 6:58pm · Bob Bogle 121,780 words. just finished chap 18. at 1.5 line spacing, this puts me at the top of p 495. chap 18 is the longest so far, at 14,576 words and 56 pp (before this was averaging 26 pp/chap). day 135 of draft 1 of this pre-novel tome. in some ways it's growing joycer, although not so frankly stream-of-consciousness. chap 19 is to be rather complex, involving various mystical, arcane, numerologic and occult forces......prob will take a fair amt of time simply to begin outlining it before i actually write a single word........
August 29, 2010 at 10:02am · Bob Bogle 123,838 words. on the way to fort pulaski and tybee island.
August 31, 2010 at 8:04pm · Bob Bogle 125,000 words on the nose.
September 2, 2010 at 8:08pm · Bob Bogle 125,841 words. chap 19, episode 7/32.
September 4, 2010 at 8:45pm · Bob Bogle 126,507 words. chap 19, just finished ep 7/32.
September 5, 2010 at 8:18pm · Bob Bogle 127,659 words. chap 19, ep 9/32.
September 6, 2010 at 8:40pm · Bob Bogle 127,999 words. chap 19, ep 9/32.
September 7, 2010 at 8:43pm · Bob Bogle 128,951 words. chap 19, beginning ep 10/32. just remembered i have a 2 hr audio recording pertinent to chap 18 that i haven't listened to yet.....
September 9, 2010 at 6:01am · Bob Bogle 131,062 words. chap 19, ep 11/32.
September 18, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 132,124 words. Chap 19, ep 11/32 now finished. temporarily side-tracked writing another story and derailed into genealogy, among other things; hope i'm back on the scent of the novel again. for the first time, i'm beginning to feel the end of this story reaching out for me from out there.
September 25, 2010 at 7:50am · Bob Bogle 134,101 words. Chap 19, ep 12/32 finished. the pivot point: was going south and east; now going north and west.
September 26, 2010 at 9:53am · Bob Bogle 136,526 words. Chap 19, ep 14/32 finished. at 14,745 words, chap 19 has now become the longest in this tome, and only abt half way through it. on p 551, for what little that's worth.
September 29, 2010 at 6:11pm · Bob Bogle 138,173 words. Chap 19, ep 16/32 begun.
September 30, 2010 at 7:32pm · Bob Bogle 138,950 words. Chap 19, ep 16/32 continues.
October 3, 2010 at 7:49pm · Bob Bogle 140,182 words. chap 19, ep 17/32 done..........almost.
October 8, 2010 at 5:40am · Bob Bogle 141,370 words. chap 19, ep 18/32 done.
October 8, 2010 at 6:03pm · Bob Bogle 144,876 words. chap 19, ep 21/32 (mostly) done. 2k+ words today. yay.
October 10, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle 147,266 words. chap 19, ep 24/32 done.
October 14, 2010 at 8:39pm · Bob Bogle 149,257 words. chap 19, ep 26/32 almost done. a patch of poor productivity. grr.
October 19, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle 150,326 words. chap 19, ep 27/32. getting there....
October 23, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle 154,108 words. chap 19, ep 29/32 screeching to its end. day194 of writing this novel. a good writing day to end a rather crummy week.
October 27, 2010 at 8:04pm · Bob Bogle 155,877 words. chap 19, ep 30/32. slow-going trying to be faux-literary while sneaking in a geography lesson. tightly crawling, curling, contorting rivers!
October 30, 2010 at 8:44pm · Bob Bogle 158,840 words. chap 19, ep 30/32. done w the worst of this river-writing like a hard math problem. just abt forgot what this book is supposed to be abt.
November 6, 2010 at 2:49pm · Bob Bogle 160,852 words. chap 19, ep 31/32. that's more like it.
November 7, 2010 at 8:49am · Bob Bogle 162,011 words. chap 19, ep 31/32 almost done. hope i get more words in today............we'll see.
November 8, 2010 at 6:11am · Bob Bogle 162,782 words. chap 19, ep 32/32 done, 1st pass-through. chap 19 is 41,001 words long so far.......have some christmas tree ornaments to go back and hang on its various branches still.........then some probable additions to be made to chap 18 before pressing on to chap 20.
November 9, 2010 at 12:34pm · Bob Bogle 163,466 words. still a few more christmas ornaments to go on chap 19; should be done tomorrow.
November 11, 2010 at 7:51pm · Bob Bogle 163,659 words. done w christmas ornaments; well, except for a pile of notes i need to look through.....and a new book i recently bought abt the mississippi.......
November 12, 2010 at 7:42pm · Bob Bogle 164,311 words. minor additions to chaps 18 & 19. a few more amendments to be made later, but officially i'm now ready to start thinking abt and writing the last 4 chaps....i definitely see the tunnel opening up before me.........the light at its end is not quite visible, however.
November 14, 2010 at 7:23pm · Bob Bogle 165,770 words. chap 20 of 23. goes very nicely.
November 15, 2010 at 7:31pm · Bob Bogle 169,817 words. maybe abt half thru chap 20 of 23. approaching charleston; brief detour for m theory, constants, etc.
November 22, 2010 at 3:10pm · Bob Bogle 171,887 words. chap 20/23. in charleston for a few moe paragraphs. a week of witing lost to seriously degraded vision........but some seriously sweet sentences today. hey isn't it about time that sometimes now and then the good guys win???
November 29, 2010 at 11:39pm · Bob Bogle 174,588 words. chap 20/23. almost to charlotte, nc and end of chap.
November 30, 2010 at 9:08pm · Bob Bogle 179,025 words. chap 20/23. only a few more pp to go in this chapter, but after writing 3,830 words today -- my most prolific day ever -- i've decided to set the ol' laptop aside for awhile............enuff is enuff!
December 4, 2010 at 6:17pm · Bob Bogle 182,058 words, chap 21/23. two weeks lost researching this chap, but now i'm back.
December 19, 2010 at 3:42pm · Bob Bogle 185,195 words, chap 21/23. good, steady progress in a difficult chap.
December 21, 2010 at 10:32pm · Bob Bogle 186,751 words, chap 21/23. a CRAWLING pace, but some pretty good words strung together. i hope it starts to pick up again soon.
December 27, 2010 at 7:09pm · Bob Bogle 189,223 words, chap 21/23. a little better; a very hard, research-intense chap.
January 1 at 10:19pm · Bob Bogle 193,220 words, chap 21/23. back in georgia for a flanking turn against chattanooga.
January 4 at 7:35pm · Bob Bogle 195,558 words, chap 21/23. many words abt rosecrans and bragg.
January 7 at 7:30pm · Bob Bogle 197,019 words, chap 21/23. days of distraction for thinking persons; not so many of them left.
January 10 at 7:19pm · Bob Bogle 199,652 words, chap 21/23. on the cusp of chickamauga.
January 19 at 7:56pm · Bob Bogle 200,825 words, chap 21/23. day 280. the 200k word threshold broken.......again!
January 21 at 7:45pm · Bob Bogle 202,034 words, chap 21/23. about another thousand words, then out of chickamauga and in chattanooga and ringgold. then............chap 22. but still a ways to go. but a good couple of days.
January 22 at 7:47pm · Bob Bogle 202,704 words, chap 21/. farewell chickamauga.
January 23 at 6:43pm · Bob Bogle 206,030 words, chap 21/23. day 290 of writing. 2772 words today; 5th best day.
January 31 at 7:21pm · Bob Bogle 208,635 words, chap 21/23. hopefully just 1 more day on chap 21.
February 3 at 1:46pm · Bob Bogle 212,347 words, chap 22/23. half through shiloh.
February 13 at 8:09pm · Bob Bogle 213,756 words, chap 22/23. almost in memphis.
February 20 at 6:45am · Bob Bogle 214,275 words, chap 22/23. now have to write abt .... basketball. ah, the trials of being a writer.
February 20 at 6:35pm · Bob Bogle 216,018 words, chap 22/23 done. on to the end.
February 24 at 7:01am · Bob Bogle 220,769 words, chap 23/23. 1226 hr/1600 hr. on beale street.
March 2 at 7:23am · Bob Bogle 221,387 words, chap 23/23. 1235 hr/1600 hr. bars, bars, bars.
March 4 at 7:09pm · Bob Bogle 222,076 words, chap 23/23, 1307 hr/1600 hr. beyond gibson guitar factory.
March 8 at 7:14pm · Bob Bogle 230,438 words. THE END.
While writing the first draft I kept a sort of diary on Facebook, recording word counts and various other minor observations. Here it is:
Bob Bogle
don't talk to me when i'm writing.
April 17, 2010 at 6:21pm - Bob Bogle 740 words.
April 17, 2010 at 8:46pm · Diana Rede What are you working on now?
April 17, 2010 at 8:57pm · Bob Bogle very new novel.
April 18, 2010 at 7:09am · Ben Northon Ah, so MBA'10 was a _research_ trip?
April 18, 2010 at 12:41pm · Bob Bogle all of being alive is always full time research all of the time. . . .for all of us.
April 18, 2010 at 4:13pm · Bob Bogle 2,459 words.
April 18, 2010 at 8:33pm · Bob Bogle chap 1 done. 4,000 words.
April 19, 2010 at 6:40pm · Bob Bogle 5,343 words.
April 20, 2010 at 8:09pm · Bob Bogle 6,097 words. must sleeeeeep!
April 21, 2010 at 8:08pm · Bob Bogle 8,970 words.
April 22, 2010 at 8:47pm · Bob Bogle 10,600 words.
April 23, 2010 at 8:35pm · Bob Bogle 12,852 words.
April 24, 2010 at 7:06pm · Bob Bogle 16,830 words. pretty good day. coulda done more, but i had to split a runaway chapter 2 into chapters 2 and 3, which required a little backtracking and rewriting. almost done w chap 3, but sleep is more important right now.
April 25, 2010 at 8:59pm · Bob Bogle 19,742 words.
April 26, 2010 at 6:47pm · Bob Bogle 20,455 words. a day w a few complications. rats!
April 27, 2010 at 8:02pm · Bob Bogle 21,917 words. slightly misleading. making transcripts of voice recordings, radically pruning, editing, adapting to fiction, etc. not "writing" as one might think of it.
April 28, 2010 at 7:39pm · Bob Bogle 23,729 words: the good news. the bad news: essentially no sleep today.
April 29, 2010 at 8:37pm · Bob Bogle 25,099 words _and_ got a little sleep today. yipee!
April 30, 2010 at 8:35pm · Bob Bogle 27,074 words, just beginning chap 6.
May 1, 2010 at 8:38pm · Jeff Knowles that's like an insane number of words dude...wish I could focus. i'm not talking to you just typing
May 2, 2010 at 11:51am · Bob Bogle i like to think of it as a channeled obsession.
May 2, 2010 at 2:58pm · Jeff Knowles Yah I think I'm down with that concept. Better than the unchannel'd ones.
May 2, 2010 at 3:23pm · Bob Bogle 29,076 words. had to pause to do a little bit of research (concerning geology of the ozarks), which always slows one down. . . .but i'm quite happy to have written 2,002 words today. next stop little rock, by way of the battle of pea ridge.
May 2, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle 29,578 words. my lowest per diem word count so far, but a great, great deal of research had to be done today concerning the movements of the 9th iowa volunteer infantry, and it all has substantial ramifications for the rest of the novel. . . .some day, God willing, you'll see. . . .
May 3, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 30,809 words, and still not in little rock. woulda got more done today but had to break for dinner.......well, this coming week, beginning tomorrow.........
May 4, 2010 at 8:31pm · Bob Bogle yay: 32,097 words. finally made it out of little rick and on the way east!
May 5, 2010 at 10:01pm · Bob Bogle uh, rock.
May 5, 2010 at 10:01pm · Bob Bogle 33,727 words. my clock's still upside down & can't think clearly, so gonna call it a day. abt half way through chap 7 and just crossed the mighty mississippi.
May 6, 2010 at 6:45pm · Bob Bogle 35,860 words. down thru clarksville and on the doorstep of vicksburg. tomorrow will finish chapter 7.
May 8, 2010 at 12:02am · Bob Bogle 38,372 words. how to write abt vicksburg w/o making it a history lesson?
May 8, 2010 at 11:50pm · Adam Mieczyński you're a machine with a heart transplant, methinks. Try not to go the way of Walter Scott and the like. I hate those historical digressions, totally ruins the immersion.
May 9, 2010 at 4:07am · Bob Bogle yeah. good advice, but idk how well i can follow it on 1st draft. w this novel seems i 1st have to build the house before i tear out all the walls to remodel it. hold my feet to this fire w this advice in subsequent drafts if you please, however. . . .the ice berg metaphor is also appropriate. i feel like i must explore much of the mass that's hidden away under the waves b4 i can edit it all out again, firm in the knowledge that, nonetheless, it is there. . . .
May 9, 2010 at 5:31am · Bob Bogle 40,286 words. spent a good deal of time consulting vicksburg resources today, but also did a fairly decent job, i think, of minimizing the depositional tone, so. . . .would have liked to have written more, but this is a pretty good compromise.
May 9, 2010 at 9:06pm · Bob Bogle 42,858 words. this has not been an easy day for writing, but the effect achieved is good, i think. with luck i'll be out of vicksburg tomorrow.
May 10, 2010 at 11:12pm · Bob Bogle 44,341 words. coming in to nola.
May 11, 2010 at 6:56pm · Bob Bogle 46,601 words. strolling through the streets of new orleans. a niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice part to be writing.
May 12, 2010 at 8:10pm · Bob Bogle 47,247 words. gr. garden district history, architecture.
May 13, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 49,152 words. sorry to have to stop now, but. . . .
May 14, 2010 at 7:59pm · Bob Bogle 50,179 words. yay, 50k+. um, all that jazz.
May 15, 2010 at 7:58pm · Bob Bogle 51,435 words. lots of research today; maybe less tomorrow.
May 16, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle 52,331 words. mostly cleaning up some loose ends. outside complications. . . .
May 17, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle 53,815 words. chap 10. . . .
May 18, 2010 at 7:22pm · Bob Bogle 55,121 words.
May 20, 2010 at 11:09pm · Bob Bogle 55,892 words.
May 21, 2010 at 6:56pm · Bob Bogle 56,490 words.
May 22, 2010 at 9:42pm · Bob Bogle 58,265 words.
May 25, 2010 at 1:15am · Bob Bogle 58,784 words.
May 26, 2010 at 7:56pm · Bob Bogle 59,023 words. tomorrow....................
May 27, 2010 at 8:24pm · Bob Bogle 59,948 words. started chap 11.
May 28, 2010 at 8:18pm · Bob Bogle 61,481 words. much better.
May 29, 2010 at 8:17pm · Bob Bogle 62,464 words. pausing to organize notes....
May 30, 2010 at 8:52pm · Bob Bogle 62,778 words. >:^[
June 1, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 63,909 words. sloggin' thru wet concrete.
June 4, 2010 at 11:26pm · Diana Rede ?
June 5, 2010 at 10:33am · Bob Bogle 64,498 words as of yesterday. sometimes, diana, it flows. sometimes you're struggling forward against the storm surge. last few weeks have beeen disrupted by various outside influences. i have some reason to hope i broke through that s...tuff yesterday and can now start getting back on track.
June 6, 2010 at 6:23am · Diana Rede O so dinner might be out of the ? thought we should catch up...
June 6, 2010 at 7:55pm · Bob Bogle of course not, my friend! food is always a good idea. did you have anything specific in mind?
June 6, 2010 at 8:01pm · Bob Bogle 66,957 words. enough for today. now. . . .on to alabama!
June 6, 2010 at 8:05pm · Bob Bogle 67,808 words.
June 8, 2010 at 5:41am · Bob Bogle 68,336 words.
June 9, 2010 at 2:38am · Bob Bogle 70,844 words.
June 10, 2010 at 8:03am · Bob Bogle 72,181 words. shifting emphasis to mid-60s. (remember the mid-60s?)
June 10, 2010 at 6:47pm · Bob Bogle 72,651 words. still recalibrating. it's a long road from new orleans to civil rights.
June 12, 2010 at 7:13pm · Bob Bogle it's just a cheap psychological trick for my simple brain to keep up motivation. beyond that it has no meaning whatsoever. it must be hoped that the final word count is significantly less than that of the first draft.
June 12, 2010 at 7:41pm · Bob Bogle 73,380 words. made some minor but important modifications to a few earlier chapters.
"Anyone seen that danged old Yazoo and Delta Railroad?" he said, but no one answered him. He shrugged and climbed in last, muttering: "Don't say I never... warned you when your train gets lost."
June 14, 2010 at 8:37pm · Bob Bogle 74,070 words.
June 15, 2010 at 8:32pm · Bob Bogle 74,803 words. montgomery.
June 19, 2010 at 1:34am · Bob Bogle 76,260 words. almost in birmingham, and irritated in abt 10 different ways. more eager to reach georgia than you can possibly imagine.
June 20, 2010 at 12:11am · Bob Bogle 76,936 words. lost a large chunk of what i wrote yesterday; didn't mind too much as i didn't care for it. rapidly reconstructed what was best and pressed on....night in birmingham & nearing the end of chap 13.
June 20, 2010 at 10:12pm · Bob Bogle 78,847 words. starting chap 14.
June 22, 2010 at 12:03am · Bob Bogle 80,249 words.
June 23, 2010 at 12:04am · Bob Bogle 80,909 words. took a few days collecting and preparing notes. the civil rights stuff is very difficult; probably the hardest part of the whole shebang. today mostly inserting the occasional sentence or phrase throughout the earlier chapters. probably this seems pretty strange. . . .
June 26, 2010 at 7:41pm · Bob Bogle 81,337 words.
June 27, 2010 at 7:55pm · Bob Bogle 83,418 words. most of birmingham is done.
June 28, 2010 at 7:52pm · Bob Bogle 83,787 words. and here we go again. . . .
July 1, 2010 at 4:21am · Bob Bogle 84,246 words.
July 2, 2010 at 2:43am · Bob Bogle 85,477 words & across the border.
July 3, 2010 at 1:05am · Bob Bogle 87,643 words.
July 3, 2010 at 9:46pm · Bob Bogle 88,888 words.
July 5, 2010 at 7:28am · Bob Bogle 89,971 words.
July 6, 2010 at 5:10am · Bob Bogle 92,431 words. interesting....going to have to add one more (short) unexpected chapter abt atlanta.......unfortunately, must call it a day to start getting ready for another trip.....i do hope to be able to continue working while we're in seattle, though prob at a much-reduced pace.
July 6, 2010 at 5:37pm · Bob Bogle 93,687 words. back from seattle. better get yourself together darlin', join the human race.
July 15, 2010 at 1:42am · Bob Bogle 94,596 words. plus some more notes that will comprise actual text later.....anyway, i should do some reading, or watch a dvd, or something.
July 15, 2010 at 10:22pm · Bob Bogle 95,967 words. atlanta nightfall. murder & decadence.
July 17, 2010 at 1:19am · Bob Bogle 97,602 words.
July 17, 2010 at 11:16pm · Bob Bogle 98,749 words. research mode & in urgent need of a mindless movie or something. zany doings atop stone mountain in 1915. ugh.
July 18, 2010 at 9:51pm · Bob Bogle 101,081 words. reconstruction blues.
July 19, 2010 at 8:45pm · Bob Bogle 101,446 words. worked all day on the book though the #s don't show it........ug. all too soon back to work......well, i did meet my goal of breaking through the 100k word barrier.
July 20, 2010 at 9:30pm · Bob Bogle 102,444 words. uh, that would be more or less abt 480 pages.
July 21, 2010 at 8:03pm · Bob Bogle 102,640 words. pretty poor showing. reading abt the leo frank/mary phagan case.
July 22, 2010 at 8:11pm · Bob Bogle 103,696 words. almost to stone mountain.
July 23, 2010 at 8:03pm · Bob Bogle 104,575 words, and day 100 of this novel.
July 25, 2010 at 8:20pm · Bob Bogle 105,690 words. ah, unfortunately, too sleepy to go on today.
July 28, 2010 at 7:04pm · Bob Bogle 107,076 words.
July 30, 2010 at 1:56am · Bob Bogle 108,409 words.
July 31, 2010 at 12:04am · Bob Bogle 110,807 words.
August 2, 2010 at 6:45pm · Bob Bogle i've spent a week re-immersing myself in savannah and scribbling occasional notes and additional material for previous chapters, and pausing briefly to write an unrelated story. preparing to resume writing-proper on the novel, soon. . . .perhaps i'll upload some interesting images of savannah i've come across on line. it's important to get this part of the story reasonably right. . . .
August 13, 2010 at 6:17am · Bob Bogle 120,062 words. after writing the long walk, i've spent several days reviewing a lot of divergent thoughts and notes and compressing, reconciling, and distilling them, making my word count shorter and shorter, so progress to the 120k mark ...has been slow and almost asymptotic, but finally i've arrived. approaching the end of chap 18, i think. the longest chapter at (so far) 12,858 words. the thing is that i'm not really writing the novel right now but a pre-novel, in which i'm trying to let the characters grow organically w/o me dictating who they are, and also i'm trying to figure out what the whole setting is about. i am getting there, but the novel itself must eventually grow out of whomever these characters become. so perhaps it's like writing forwards now, and later everything will be rewritten in reverse. . . .something like that. it's maybe hard to understand if you haven't done something like it. sure. i don't really understand it myself.
August 24, 2010 at 6:58pm · Bob Bogle 121,780 words. just finished chap 18. at 1.5 line spacing, this puts me at the top of p 495. chap 18 is the longest so far, at 14,576 words and 56 pp (before this was averaging 26 pp/chap). day 135 of draft 1 of this pre-novel tome. in some ways it's growing joycer, although not so frankly stream-of-consciousness. chap 19 is to be rather complex, involving various mystical, arcane, numerologic and occult forces......prob will take a fair amt of time simply to begin outlining it before i actually write a single word........
August 29, 2010 at 10:02am · Bob Bogle 123,838 words. on the way to fort pulaski and tybee island.
August 31, 2010 at 8:04pm · Bob Bogle 125,000 words on the nose.
September 2, 2010 at 8:08pm · Bob Bogle 125,841 words. chap 19, episode 7/32.
September 4, 2010 at 8:45pm · Bob Bogle 126,507 words. chap 19, just finished ep 7/32.
September 5, 2010 at 8:18pm · Bob Bogle 127,659 words. chap 19, ep 9/32.
September 6, 2010 at 8:40pm · Bob Bogle 127,999 words. chap 19, ep 9/32.
September 7, 2010 at 8:43pm · Bob Bogle 128,951 words. chap 19, beginning ep 10/32. just remembered i have a 2 hr audio recording pertinent to chap 18 that i haven't listened to yet.....
September 9, 2010 at 6:01am · Bob Bogle 131,062 words. chap 19, ep 11/32.
September 18, 2010 at 8:38pm · Bob Bogle 132,124 words. Chap 19, ep 11/32 now finished. temporarily side-tracked writing another story and derailed into genealogy, among other things; hope i'm back on the scent of the novel again. for the first time, i'm beginning to feel the end of this story reaching out for me from out there.
September 25, 2010 at 7:50am · Bob Bogle 134,101 words. Chap 19, ep 12/32 finished. the pivot point: was going south and east; now going north and west.
September 26, 2010 at 9:53am · Bob Bogle 136,526 words. Chap 19, ep 14/32 finished. at 14,745 words, chap 19 has now become the longest in this tome, and only abt half way through it. on p 551, for what little that's worth.
September 29, 2010 at 6:11pm · Bob Bogle 138,173 words. Chap 19, ep 16/32 begun.
September 30, 2010 at 7:32pm · Bob Bogle 138,950 words. Chap 19, ep 16/32 continues.
October 3, 2010 at 7:49pm · Bob Bogle 140,182 words. chap 19, ep 17/32 done..........almost.
October 8, 2010 at 5:40am · Bob Bogle 141,370 words. chap 19, ep 18/32 done.
October 8, 2010 at 6:03pm · Bob Bogle 144,876 words. chap 19, ep 21/32 (mostly) done. 2k+ words today. yay.
October 10, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle 147,266 words. chap 19, ep 24/32 done.
October 14, 2010 at 8:39pm · Bob Bogle 149,257 words. chap 19, ep 26/32 almost done. a patch of poor productivity. grr.
October 19, 2010 at 8:36pm · Bob Bogle 150,326 words. chap 19, ep 27/32. getting there....
October 23, 2010 at 7:25pm · Bob Bogle 154,108 words. chap 19, ep 29/32 screeching to its end. day194 of writing this novel. a good writing day to end a rather crummy week.
October 27, 2010 at 8:04pm · Bob Bogle 155,877 words. chap 19, ep 30/32. slow-going trying to be faux-literary while sneaking in a geography lesson. tightly crawling, curling, contorting rivers!
October 30, 2010 at 8:44pm · Bob Bogle 158,840 words. chap 19, ep 30/32. done w the worst of this river-writing like a hard math problem. just abt forgot what this book is supposed to be abt.
November 6, 2010 at 2:49pm · Bob Bogle 160,852 words. chap 19, ep 31/32. that's more like it.
November 7, 2010 at 8:49am · Bob Bogle 162,011 words. chap 19, ep 31/32 almost done. hope i get more words in today............we'll see.
November 8, 2010 at 6:11am · Bob Bogle 162,782 words. chap 19, ep 32/32 done, 1st pass-through. chap 19 is 41,001 words long so far.......have some christmas tree ornaments to go back and hang on its various branches still.........then some probable additions to be made to chap 18 before pressing on to chap 20.
November 9, 2010 at 12:34pm · Bob Bogle 163,466 words. still a few more christmas ornaments to go on chap 19; should be done tomorrow.
November 11, 2010 at 7:51pm · Bob Bogle 163,659 words. done w christmas ornaments; well, except for a pile of notes i need to look through.....and a new book i recently bought abt the mississippi.......
November 12, 2010 at 7:42pm · Bob Bogle 164,311 words. minor additions to chaps 18 & 19. a few more amendments to be made later, but officially i'm now ready to start thinking abt and writing the last 4 chaps....i definitely see the tunnel opening up before me.........the light at its end is not quite visible, however.
November 14, 2010 at 7:23pm · Bob Bogle 165,770 words. chap 20 of 23. goes very nicely.
November 15, 2010 at 7:31pm · Bob Bogle 169,817 words. maybe abt half thru chap 20 of 23. approaching charleston; brief detour for m theory, constants, etc.
November 22, 2010 at 3:10pm · Bob Bogle 171,887 words. chap 20/23. in charleston for a few moe paragraphs. a week of witing lost to seriously degraded vision........but some seriously sweet sentences today. hey isn't it about time that sometimes now and then the good guys win???
November 29, 2010 at 11:39pm · Bob Bogle 174,588 words. chap 20/23. almost to charlotte, nc and end of chap.
November 30, 2010 at 9:08pm · Bob Bogle 179,025 words. chap 20/23. only a few more pp to go in this chapter, but after writing 3,830 words today -- my most prolific day ever -- i've decided to set the ol' laptop aside for awhile............enuff is enuff!
December 4, 2010 at 6:17pm · Bob Bogle 182,058 words, chap 21/23. two weeks lost researching this chap, but now i'm back.
December 19, 2010 at 3:42pm · Bob Bogle 185,195 words, chap 21/23. good, steady progress in a difficult chap.
December 21, 2010 at 10:32pm · Bob Bogle 186,751 words, chap 21/23. a CRAWLING pace, but some pretty good words strung together. i hope it starts to pick up again soon.
December 27, 2010 at 7:09pm · Bob Bogle 189,223 words, chap 21/23. a little better; a very hard, research-intense chap.
January 1 at 10:19pm · Bob Bogle 193,220 words, chap 21/23. back in georgia for a flanking turn against chattanooga.
January 4 at 7:35pm · Bob Bogle 195,558 words, chap 21/23. many words abt rosecrans and bragg.
January 7 at 7:30pm · Bob Bogle 197,019 words, chap 21/23. days of distraction for thinking persons; not so many of them left.
January 10 at 7:19pm · Bob Bogle 199,652 words, chap 21/23. on the cusp of chickamauga.
January 19 at 7:56pm · Bob Bogle 200,825 words, chap 21/23. day 280. the 200k word threshold broken.......again!
January 21 at 7:45pm · Bob Bogle 202,034 words, chap 21/23. about another thousand words, then out of chickamauga and in chattanooga and ringgold. then............chap 22. but still a ways to go. but a good couple of days.
January 22 at 7:47pm · Bob Bogle 202,704 words, chap 21/. farewell chickamauga.
January 23 at 6:43pm · Bob Bogle 206,030 words, chap 21/23. day 290 of writing. 2772 words today; 5th best day.
January 31 at 7:21pm · Bob Bogle 208,635 words, chap 21/23. hopefully just 1 more day on chap 21.
February 3 at 1:46pm · Bob Bogle 212,347 words, chap 22/23. half through shiloh.
February 13 at 8:09pm · Bob Bogle 213,756 words, chap 22/23. almost in memphis.
February 20 at 6:45am · Bob Bogle 214,275 words, chap 22/23. now have to write abt .... basketball. ah, the trials of being a writer.
February 20 at 6:35pm · Bob Bogle 216,018 words, chap 22/23 done. on to the end.
February 24 at 7:01am · Bob Bogle 220,769 words, chap 23/23. 1226 hr/1600 hr. on beale street.
March 2 at 7:23am · Bob Bogle 221,387 words, chap 23/23. 1235 hr/1600 hr. bars, bars, bars.
March 4 at 7:09pm · Bob Bogle 222,076 words, chap 23/23, 1307 hr/1600 hr. beyond gibson guitar factory.
March 8 at 7:14pm · Bob Bogle 230,438 words. THE END.
bob this is from chapter 1.1...thomas l. bainright was my fourth grandfather...please correct spelling ..you wrote forth instead of fourth.
ReplyDeletei am so impressed with the details, legnth and structure of your sentences!!! thanx