Day 1

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Here's today's prompt for you to post your updates and any excerpts and thoughts etc in comments.

I also thought I'd provide a link to a simple word counter, the Picometer at Writertopia.com. To make it easy, just copy the following HTML, changing 1340 to the number of words you've written, and 5000 to whatever your target is:

<img src="http://picometer.writertopia.com/words=1340&target=5000" />

The result for this example is:

Comments

[akane42me.livejournal.com]

My goal is 200 words each day, so I'm happy to have gotten 500!

Here's an extract:

His eyes were steel grey in the shadow. If he moved from the shadow into the light, she thought his eyes might change to blue. She sipped her coffee and reached for a grey-blue pastel. Returning to her sketch, she applied some light strokes to the shadowed part of the man’s body. That was it. The touch of blue added a sense of mystery, of pent-up energy to the grey form in the drawing.

A shadow blocked her light, and she looked up. He stood over her, tall, reed thin, smiling.

“You’re drawing me.”

“I hope you don’t mind.”

“Actually, I was hoping you’d give it to me.”

Now, two years later, she cursed her missing husband, and what he’d hidden behind those steel grey eyes. She wondered what he’d really been waiting for that day.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

An excellent word count already!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting! Is this for a short story, or a novel?

[akane42me.livejournal.com]

It's for a novel! I started it a few years ago and abandoned it, and I'm finally back at it. I hope I can finish it within a year, but I'm a really slow writer, so we'll see!

[kerravonsen]

Oooh, intriguing.

[akane42me.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hope I can keep the rest of it intriguing, too!

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

Nice hook!

[akane42me.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Now I have to catch the fish...

[azdak.livejournal.com]

She's an artist! That's so cool! is that one of the few pictures of him that exist?

And 500 words! Fantastic!

[akane42me.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a rare picture. No pictures, pleeeze.

As for 500 words, yes, that's a good start. How long did you say a novel is? 80,000? *eeep*