I beat time I set. I rejoice.

Strider is one of my favorite books. It's in my kid's lit pantheon with Tangerine, The Westing Game, and A Wrinkle In Time.

Children's literature, writing, and objective failure/subjective success are all on my mind today.

I've determined that UA is what "they" classify as 'middle grade', and therefore have been thinking about it differently. Today saw a lousy number of words, but I made strides in structure, themes, and characterization (sic; no spell check on the iPtouch, and I'm not sure that looks right.)

Today also found me crunching numbers and breaking my big million word goal down into categories and projects and giving them ballpark word quotas. It seems like I evolve my process once a week, honing day by day to find out what works for me.

Speaking of the big million word goal, i'm starting to believe I won't make it by the end of the year. For one, January is nearly over and I'm 25,000 words in the hole. That's more than a week's quota. Spread out over the remaining days this year, it's only 70 additional words daily, but considering the struggles I'm having keeping up right now, that's more difficult than it sounds.

On the side of subjective success: I've written at least 300 words every day since I started this project on January 3rd, and my running total is over 40,000 words for the month. The project is working. I'm taking writing more seriously. Even if I keep fumbling along at half my daily goal, I'm still going to get a heck of a lot done this year. The million word mark isn't just something to do for 2010, it's also an assignment for me to get the "crap" out of my system and put a few practice novels in a trunk. Even as i fall farther behind schedule, I don't despair.

I beat time I set.