Too. Much. Writing.

My brother asked me a good question recently. I had written to him, telling him that I generally produce somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10,000 words a month for the magazine I write for. His response:

Do the 10,000 words per month have to form coherent stories? Or is it strictly a word count?

After this month, I find that to be a particularly good question, because my output this month has been not doubled, but nearly trebled. Late this afternoon I wrote my 28,374th word of the month. And by “of the month,” I really mean “of the past two weeks.” My work has consisted of four chapters of an annual legal directory we publish, four separate stories for the magazine and a massive news section for the same magazine. (I’ve produced well over half the magazine’s content this month, which is – and hopefully shall remain – an aberration.)

It’s little surprise, then, that I haven’t blogged in three weeks. When Brad complained that his RSS feeds weren’t showing new posts, I offered to send him a draft of my chapter on corporate law firms in Vietnam, which he promptly declined.

Smart boy, that Brad. The Laos chapter is much shorter.

***

My day got off to a roaring start this morning.

Shelly is in the US right now, first visiting family and then doing some work, and the cat is feeling her absence. Shelly usually wakes up sometime between 5 and 6, though lately she has been waking up even earlier.

So, at 4:30 this morning, Fat Choy decided it was time to get up. She was very persuasive with her arguments. Or maybe it was that she was very loud. Or maybe it was her repeated head-butts to my face. After finally giving in, I was up at 5 and couldn’t go back to sleep. (I don’t remember the last time I was up at 5, but it must have been to fly somewhere. It almost certainly wasn’t because I *wanted* to be.)

What this boils down to is that, after I put the dishes away, brought in the laundry, hung out more laundry, surfed the Internet, etc., etc., etc., it was 6:30. So I went to work. The No. 1 bus from Happy Valley is very empty at that time of day, which is exactly what Shelly has been telling me.

Oh, and the cat? As I was sitting at my computer at 5:15, she curled up on the sofa and went back to sleep.

***

This evening I’m in the process of updating the blog. You’ll see a couple of things back-dated to the approximate date they actually occurred. I know that mass updates aren’t really appreciated, but I’m sure there is some reason I haven’t been blogging lately.

Oh, yeah. It has something to do with those 28,374 words. Anyone want to read my chapter on Cambodia?