Monthly Stats and Excuses for February

I’m running a bit late this month. As you can see by the stats (around on the page somewhere) I’ve written every day again. The word count isn’t as high as last month, but last month I was writing a novel, now I’m writing shorts and outlining the next novel.

The editing of the previous novel is going well. I’m at the stage of needing to read it out loud, but I’m so full of cold I keep coughing, so I’m postponing until I can read without barking.

I’ve written so much lately that I’m starting to drown in manuscripts. I currently have two novels and four short stories awaiting their first edit, one short story still in progress, another starting to take shape in my head, and the aforementioned novel waiting to be wrapped up.

On top of that I’ve got a query and synopsis to hammer out and comps to find, which I hate doing. I’m giving myself until the end of the month to get those and the outline for the next novel sorted, though I’m almost certain I’ll not get both done.

It’s my daughter’s birthday this month and Mother’s Day on the same day. I’m missing my wife and daughter an awful lot, to the point the OCD is playing up a bit. My daughter would have been 28 this year and, come August when she took her own life, will have been dead longer than she was alive.

Still, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy. It’s very nearly onion and potato planting time too, so long as it stays dry.

First Draft Finished and Monthly Stats and Excuses

I have finally finished the first draft of the novel (DW in the stats). I wrote 83 days on the trot, the first time I’ve ever written a novel in one go like that.

I am now in the process of editing TMATM. To keep the writing going I’m dabbling with some short stories as I edit.

I have been writing now for ninety-four consecutive days, since the 31st of October. In that time, I’ve written over 115,000 words. Some days have only been a few hundred words, but I’ve averaged around 1,200 a day.

This month I’ve written just short of 40,000 words, finished both a novel and a short story first draft, started editing a novel, and started writing another short story.

All this writing does mean that I have a lot of editing to do though. The monthly stats are kicking around somewhere on the page, and you’ll notice that there are quite a few projects with the status 1st Edit, which means they’re first drafts waiting for me to start kicking them into shape.

It’s going to be a busy month.

New Year, New Goals

I have written every day for the past two months. Some days I’ve only managed a few hundred words, but mostly I’ve been over a thousand. For the novel I’m currently working on I’m averaging a little over 1,200 words a day.

This is mostly down to the people over at Absolute Write and the monthly threads where we keep each other going.

I reckon, at the current rate I’m writing, this first draft should be done by the end of this month. I hope so anyway.

This week I have been full of cold of the kind that hurts your head and every joint in your body. I’ve been coughing so much I’ve come close to passing out. Yet I’ve still managed to get my backside in the seat and write every day.

So, goals for this year. Well, the first one is to finish this first draft and then get the previous two edited. I then want (don’t we all?) to get submitting to agents and get some representation.

I want to get some more shorts written and get more of the ones I already have down out there again.

My mental health is improving, though not so much when I’m feeling as ill as I do at the moment. When I’m ill I find it very difficult to keep a lid on things, but going to Andy’s Man Club every Monday has helped a great deal. So, another goal is to keep that up, keep going and keep on getting better.

I also need to lose weight. The medication I’m on makes me hungry (proper drugs are supposed to give you the munchies, aren’t they?) and I’m getting a bit lardy and lumpy. It’s making my back hurt and stopping me doing things. So, eating better and getting out and about more, especially to the allotment, are also on the cards.

Anyway, I hope these good intentions last longer than they did last year.

Last month’s stats are around the page somewhere.

Absolute Write November Novel (Week 4 and a bit) and November Stats and Excuses

What a month. I’ve managed to get more than forty-two thousand words down. That’s just a tad over a third of this current novel.

Day 22: 1405 Words.
Day 23: 1259 Words.
Day 24: 1162 Words.
Day 25: 1007 Words.
Day 26: 1175 Words.
Day 27: 1038 Words.
Day 28: 1463 Words.
Day 29: 1224 Words.
Day 30: 1311 Words.

I didn’t really have any trouble writing this month. I got my backside in the chair every day. Only on the 19th did I have a problem. I managed to shatter a tooth.

I decided I couldn’t be bothered to cook a proper tea that night and so opened a pack of frozen burgers. Well, one of them had a bit of bone or some foreign body in it. I bit down on it and one of my teeth just exploded. I swallowed the foreign body and a bit of tooth and spat a bit of tooth out. What was left was split in two. The pain was agonising. I almost passed out.

Unfortunately, this happened just as the dentist closed so I was left to call NHS 111, who kept me on the phone for ninety minutes only to tell me they’d call me back within twenty-four hours.

Anyway, next morning I called the dentist who asked me to send photos of the tooth. Have you ever tried to take a photo of your own mouth? I got my chin, my nose, my left cheek, and finally a blurred shot of the inside of my mouth.

A little while later I was asked to come into the dentist and just sit and wait and they’d get to me when they could. They were full up with appointments, but they did their best to fit me in.

I wasn’t waiting that long thankfully, when the dentist saw me. She took an x-ray (after giving me some anaesthetic) and said she wouldn’t be able to do anything if the split had gone all the way up into the bone. That would need surgery, and the waiting list was a mile long on the NHS.

Luckily the split was just in the tooth, and she managed to pull it. I’ve never been so happy to be rid of a tooth. I couldn’t stop thanking her I was so relieved.

When I got home from the dentist, guess who called. Yes, NHS 111. They called to give me an emergency appointment and seemed quite glad when they didn’t have to. Well, they are very busy I suppose.

Later that day I went to the supermarket and told them what had happened. They pointed out that there was a warning on the box about possible bits of bone (weasel words I call them) but sent me an apology and a gift card as a goodwill gesture. To be honest I was just bothered there was a dodgy batch of burgers and someone else, maybe a little kid, would come of worse than I did. An emergency tooth extraction on the NHS doesn’t cost much. If I’d needed surgery, I’d have kicked up more of a fuss, but I didn’t.

So, that is why, on the 19th, I only wrote 299 words.

I will endeavour to write a thousand words a day again this month as I’m enjoying writing this novel.

The whole month’s stats are hanging around the page somewhere.

Absolute Write November Novel 2025 – Week 1

It’s going well. My novel is something completely new to me, a romantic urban fantasy, and is going well so far . My target is 1000 words a day, but I’m hoping for more.

The week’s stats are:

Day 1: 2851 Words.
Day 2: 1791 Words.
Day 3: 2347 Words.
Day 4: 1340 Words.
Day 5: 1123 Words.
Day 6: 1362 Words.
Day 7: 1558 Words.

Which is an average of 1767 words a day.

I’m really enjoying writing this one, but then I always do when I get going on a new idea. I’ll probably slow down somewhere around the midpoint, but I do have it all mapped out, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m looking towards 120k words in all for a first draft, so it won’t get finished in one month anyway.

Tune in next week.

October Stats and Excuses

I’ve managed to get quite a lot done, even though the month has had its ups and downs. One up was my youngest grandson’s first birthday, another finally getting all of the potatoes out of the allotment.

The down was a bout of food poisoning that has lasted almost a week for me. My son mostly recovered after a couple of days but neither of us is eating properly yet. I am most definitely feeling on the delicate side.

Still, I have managed to get over 10k words written and another 1400 edited out. The word counts don’t look brilliant but most of that writing was over the first week. The rest of the time was spent editing and knocking out a couple of pieces of flash fiction. Both have been submitted and a short story, which accounted for most of the editing, will get sent out tomorrow.

With my new medication and an increase in the dose, much of the month has been a bit of a blur to be honest. I’d better wake up though the Absolute Write November Novel starts tomorrow and I’ve already said I’d give it a go, but more on that later.

The monthly stats are hanging around the page somewhere.

Comforting Cauliflowers

Ok, so the title makes it sound as if this is going to be all about vegetables, and it is, sort of. It’s also about mental health, mine specifically.

My youngest daughter, at the age of fourteen, took her own life a little over thirteen years ago. The year she died was the year I got my first allotment. She and my eldest daughter helped me clear it, but it was my youngest who I remember being there the most. It’s probably a false memory for all that, but she was having a rough time, self-harming and going to the plot was a bit of an outlet, or at least I think it was. It’s hard to say. I never saw what she did coming at all, so I can’t pretend to know what she was thinking, but she seemed happy there, helping me.

Anyway, on that little half plot, she planted some cauliflowers. I grew the plants from seed, and she planted them. We put nets over them. A few weeks later she was gone. That was in the August.

Come September there was a row of perfect, huge, cauliflowers. I’ve never managed to grow them since. They either bolt for the sky or do nothing much at all. I’ve had a few tennis ball size heads in the thirteen years since that crop.

Just lately I’ve had a bad time. The PTSD came back with a vengeance, and the OCD has had me screaming, quite literally. I’m now on anti-depressants, which have taken the edge off it and helped me sleep, which is a great help.

Well, a couple of weekends ago I was having it rough with the OCD. Everything was a problem, and my anxiety levels were so bad I didn’t even know I was anxious, just climbing the walls.

I went up to the plot for a few hours, it always does me good, even if I’m just sat there looking at weeds. This time I decided to harvest a few things. The last of the beans needed picking, there were tomatoes ripe on the vine, carrots, cabbage, and kale were all ready. I even dug up a row of spuds. Then I spotted a bit of white in the brassica nets and went over to have a look. White in the nets usually means a butterfly is laying a clump of eggs, which hatch out into brassica munching caterpillars.

So, I ducked under the net only to find a cabbage white butterfly and four perfect cauliflowers. One was like a football, the rest a little smaller. They looked like they’d just come out of a farm shop. I stood there and cried a little, because cauliflowers always make me think of my daughter, then went to the shed for my harvesting knife. As I cut them and trimmed them, then put them in a shopping bag, it was like she was stood there, right next to me, saying, “it’s alright dad, everything is fine.”

I let the butterfly go.

I took the cauliflowers home but, the next day, I was still climbing the walls, even after seeing the grandkids the days before. So, I went up to the plot again and, there under the nets, was another cauliflower. I swear it wasn’t there the day before. It was like she was there again. “Dad, it really is alright.”

I was alright for a while after that. I’ve been up and down a bit, but the anti-depressants are kicking in and I think I’m evening out again. Still, today at the plot I found another couple of cauliflowers under the nets, as if she’s still watching me. “See Dad? I told you you were alright.”

I don’t even remember planting cauliflowers this year but one thing I do know is that I’d do almost anything to hold her again.

Microsoft Word Similarity Checker

Most blog articles you read will be gushing about how great this AI tool is and just how to best use it.

I’m going to tell you how to get rid of it.

Firstly, I’d like to tell you how I found it. It just appeared one day, while I was writing the last blog entry in fact. There it was, bold as brass, at the bottom of the editor page.

I use the editor, it’s useful. It’s basically a spelling and grammar checker. This new bit is just more AI shoved in your face whether you like it or not. Having got rid of CoPilot, even downgrading my 365 subscription to make sure it didn’t come back, why on earth did they think I’d want this?

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I right clicked on it, expecting a context menu (hopefully with a disable option somewhere on it. Ok, yeah, I know), and the damn thing started whirring away, checking my writing (how? and against what?). I have no idea what it gets checked against, but you can bet your life that it gets uploaded to somewhere you don’t want it to be to do so. What else they use it for is anyone’s guess.

So, I hunted all over the place for an option to turn it off and came up blank. In desperation I logged onto my 365 account and struck up a conversation with one of Microsoft’s ‘agents’ via their chat support. I was waiting on hold as it were, for about twenty minutes, but within moments of them responding I had the answer, and here it is:

File>Options>Trust Center
Then click the Trust Center Settings button
Then Privacy Options and click the Privacy Settings button
Then uncheck the box for All Connected Experiences.

I unchecked all those boxes. I don’t need templates and the like and, if I ever do, I can always toggle them on and off again.

Fair play to Microsoft, they did put in a way to get rid of it and, even better, they told me where they’d hidden it. So, 365 it is for a while longer and I really can’t fault their support either.