Word Count - May 31

• Adam Demaniuk: 50,066
• Ashley Geis: 50,025

Less than three hours to go now...anyone else? Brenda Smith?

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

I take it by the complete silence surrounding this project since the end of the first week that it's going really, really well for everyone else. I'm starting to think that the rest of you jokers are laughing at me from the sidelines while I hammer out another shitty novel for no reason. But maybe, just maybe, there's at least one other person who's still struggling through this little exercise and will be a little more motivated now that I've finished.

Tomorrow, I'll dedicate my time to a more worthwhile activity. But for now, I'm going to listen to Queen a little bit longer.

EDIT: For the traditional "by the numbers" conclusion:

Words: 50,066

Characters with no spaces: 225,385 (beating the previous record of 222,551)

Chapters: 15

Number of chapters titled "Chapter 3": 2

Longest chapter: Chapter 7 (8,131)

Worst chapter: Chapter 7

Shortest chapter: Chapter 6 (1,034)

Actual time in the contest: 22 days, 27 minutes

Hours worked at my job during the contest: 167.5

Hours slept during the contest: 160.5

Hours spent driving to work: 17 hours

Actual time spent writing: 22 hours, 18 minutes

Procrastination time: 161 hours (6 days, 17 hours)

Longest writing session: 3 hours, 33 minutes on May 22

Shortest writing session: 5 minutes on May 19

Most efficient writing session: 1522 words completed in 32 minutes on May 17 (47.63 WPM)

Least efficient writing session: 1576 words completed in 57 minutes on May 1 (27.65 WPM)

Average typing speed: 38.89 WPM (Most efficient typing session in 2009 came in at 38.75 WPM)

Fuck: 112 (breaks the previous record of 106 in Al's War)

Shit: 45

Ass: 10

Bitch: 11

Number of characters named after Pixar characters: 12 (Wally, Russell, Sally, Dot, Michael, Marlon, Remy, Randall, Shelby, Buddy, Andy, Carl)

Well, I have to say that was a difficult one to get through. For this one, I decided to write in a new genre than the previous three. I would call this one a science fiction/alternate reality story, whereas the other three were kind of existential in nature.

So, we've got a little more than 24 hours until the end of May. Will there be two finishers as I predicted? Perhaps more?

"I can't...I have to write my novel."

Anyone else ever find themselves uttering that statement? Me neither...not yet, anyway.

Let's have a little week 1 recap. There were 168 hours between May 1 at midnight and May 7 at 11:59 PM. This is what I did in that time:

Hours worked: 64
Hours slept: 48.5
Hours spent driving to work: 8
Hours spent writing: 5.5

That leaves 42 hours unaccounted for. And of course, I've been getting more invitations to go to movies, barbecues, lunches with co-workers, evenings at the bar, send out flyers for Michael Janz, etc. this week than I have the entire rest of the year. That figures. But the most disturbing part is how I'm spending an average of 6 hours every day doing basically nothing, when it feels like all I'm doing is working, sleeping, driving, and writing, with time for the odd meal here and there.

So what is the point of this blog post? I don't know. I think I just wanted to ridicule the quitters about the fact that I can work 64 hours per week and still be on pace to finish. Maybe we would have a higher success rate if the losers and quitters were subjected to more humiliation than they presently are. Who's with me?

Word count, week 1

Adam Demaniuk - 11,770
Brenda Smith - 11,719
Ashley Geis - 6,584
Steve Smith - 6,117 (Exactly where I was last Sunday, at the dawn of a week of unemployment during which my girlfriend was out of town).
Amanda Henry - 4,888
Catrin Berghoff - 4,320
Steph Shantz - 3,744
Richard Casey - 1,940
Krystina Sulatycki - 298
Nadia Rushdy - 0

Sarah Bidanjiri and Dan Kaszor are out. Nobody else has reported.

Well, two of you are on pace to finish. And one of them's my mother, which at least means that I should be properly motivated this week since, while my mother is the one who introduced me to a love of reading and writing and who painstakingly transcribed the stories I concocted and illustrated as a child (Tyranna's Big Day remains the best thing I've ever written), she's also my mother. Nobody wants to be beaten by his or her mother.