Numbers in writing? Surely Not

 I missed out on celebrating my 50th Blog Post last week. Never mind, I'll be looking forward to a centenary post by the end of the year. That might be something to celebrate.

As usual, it's Thursday evening, and I'm thinking, "What shall I write about this week?"

The fifty-first post will be about my novel, Beasting Dartmoor (working title).

Numbers have dominated writing for the last couple of weeks. How many words can I get down today?

Is that what you normally think about as a writer? Numbers? Well, yes. 

I'm looking to complete my debut ( sorry if that seems pretentious) novel later this year.

To enable me to do this, I need to write about 250-300 words for at least four days a week. Happily, I am achieving that and, most days, exceeding it. I still have a lot of material to go into the project, and in the next week, I should be approaching the 20k word count.

The genre of the novel is a crime/murder thriller. Well, I hope it’s going to thrill the reader. 

As it currently stands, there have been four murders, the authorities are at a loss as to what is going on, and there is a figure in the shadows. It is principally based in the Dartmoor, Exeter and South Devon areas, although there are sojourns to London and a village in Somerset. 

I have a gap in the storyline at the halfway point of a chapter. I need a short story to lead into the next chapter. This may be the point to tease in the main antagonist. This person has just been a shadow to my protagonists, Greg Reid & Detective Sargent Marie Fliss. I have a description of the character I have in mind for this crucial role in the story.

Numbers again. I need roughly 800 to 900 words to complete the chapter, which is three days at the average word count, but it could be an hour's work if I'm on a roll. A bit of planning and we'll see what happens

As part of my 'Novel in a Year" workshops, I have an opportunity to have a piece of my work reviewed. I'm about ready to send off the first 5k words, which is both exciting and terrifying. I will also let a colleague at work read the first few chapters. She is a poet, and there is a reason I would like her to have a read. She might guess who my characters are,

There we are, then. Some exciting times for novel writing are coming up over the following months, and the motivation is at an all-time high.