Recently in Writing Category

In the process of mucking around with some of my Google Account settings this morning, I stumbled upon the old Blogger-powered TCZ group blog (unfortunately, the link to the blog itself is currently dead) that saw its heyday from June 2004 through June 2005, and then faded out slowly after that. I'd totally forgotten about most of the posts I made there, including a hilariously out-of-date post from Aug '05 that simply read "I saw regular unleaded for $2.90 a gallon this morning. (several blank lines) Good."

Reading back, it's interesting to see how my writing style has evolved over time and how parts of it now make me wince... especially where I really forced the dryly humorous side of things. I'm going to go through and post some of them here over the next little bit, in part because the old blog is now dead and thus my readership finally out-paces theirs at one-to-zero.

Back in June 2006 I wrote a draft of the following post, but never actually published it... it's still sitting in the Blogger control panel in draft form, over eighteen months later. I've put it into the extended entry here in its entirety, with only minor style revisions.

The big public display might have been last Monday at the oral defense, but today marked the official end of my schooling.  At 1:30 pm Pacific Standard Time, I submitted my final and complete dissertation to the UW Graduate School office, with all necessary approvals and signatures.  After a few moments of checking margins, fonts and other technical details, the woman behind the counter handed me a receipt and said "Congratulations Doctor Voght, you're done."

I'm told that in about a month I'll actually come to appreciate this concept of 'done' and stop waking up in the middle of the night panicking about figure legends and referencing, but until then, if anyone comes across the hours and hours of sleep I seem to have been missing for the past two months, could you point it in my general direction?  I'll be the motionless lump atop the mattress.

Lousy weather tonight seems to have led to lousy stolenborrowed internet connection as well, so this will be brief.  Up to 48,700 words and at my current pace that puts me past the finish line tomorrow.  A little creative twisting of the plot has me suddenly going back in a direction I'd envisioned years ago when I first dreamed up the plot that this story evolved from, and I think I know where I want things to end up now, which is good considering how close it is to the end, or what should be the end.

Other random trivia: 273.905 characters typed (including spaces), which gives me an average word-length of 4.58 characters.  I have no idea how that compares to anything, but there it is.

Tonight's the first night in the new apartment, and thankfully someone in the neighborhood has an unsecured wireless hub so I have network access, although just barely.  Today was mostly spent moving the last few major items and unpacking lots of stuff, but I did manage to get about another thousand words in, which brings the tally up to just over 47,500.  That's less than 5% left!

1,100 words of exciting action today.  Apparently I didn't pace this thing very well since at 46,600 words I should, in theory, be winding the story down and bringing everything to its proper conclusion, instead of ramping things up.  I promise at least to not just keep counting words and then make the last ten be "Suddenly she died unexpectedly of a heart attack.  The end."

Past the 90% mark today with another thousand words between moving yet more stuff... tally is up to 45,550.

A thousand words today between trips moving stuff from the old abode to the new abode.  Down to 5,500 words to go, which feels so close and yet still so far away at my current pace... but there are still six days to go.