If you haven’t entered the competition with the dubious prize, today is your last chance. Tomorrow I will announce the winner.
And if you don’t know what I am talking about, look at the entry for September 8th.
You have to estimate how many words I wrote between Charlottesville , Virginia, and Kuala Lumpur, on the way home. Person closest to the actual number wins. If there is a tie, then all winners will get the dubious prize…
Why dubious? Well, the prize is a free copy, posted to you, of the book I am working on (first volume in The Random Rain Quartet), tentatively called Drouthlord, although I think I am going to change that to Waterlord. Or Watermaster. Or something.
The dubiousness of the prize refers to the fact that I don’t have a publisher for the book as yet. So, who knows, you may win and never get more than an emailed copy! And if I do find a publisher, well, it may be several years before it rolls off the presses.
I’ll put a guess in for 14000 words. Who knows.
So.. is that a copy as the story currently is, or on completion?
OK, I’ll have a stab.
Lessee. It took you 37 hours. At my best rate of 1000 words an hour, that’d be 37,000 words.
NAH! You have to sleep – or pretend to be asleep, and be annoyed out of your brain because the lights are off and everyone else is pretending to be asleep, too, and if everyone would just admit that they were pretending, they could turn the lights back on (and you could turn on the computer again).
so halve that: 18,500
NAH. You have to eat, and watch the latest movie for the umpteenth time, and push away the elbow of the passenger next to you, and hang around aimlessly at airports (why do I always come to Singapore when everything is closed?)
so halve that: 9,250
NAH! Because the person next to you annoys you by wanting to go to the toilet all the time and (worse) looking over your shoulder and reading your screen.
so halve that again: 4625
NAH! Because you find that with all your wonderful intentions, writing on public transport in close confines seated next to other people is actually really impossible.
So I’d take two-thirds off: 1541 (written when you were zonked-out in some airport of which you can’t remember the name)
And when you get home, and turn on the computer, and look at your file, you think: how on earth could I have written such &^%$?? And you need to write these words all over again.
Ah – can you tell I’ve tried writing on long-haul flights?
*grin*
I’ll just go by the previous posts and guess: 3,280 words.
Hmm…i’m going to guess at 7500 words!
This is Smilz from VO 🙂
12,487
Heh. I took a laptop with me with the intention of writing on those long flights to and from Japan.
I did. I wrote precisely 1100 words. And then I got fed by something, or shut my eyes for an hour or so, and then there were the times when we were either coming up or going down and couldn’t use electronics, and all like that… so, 1100 in flight.
Add to that another 1500 or so while in Japan waiting on people or airplanes or in down moments on the trip, which adds up to a royal total of between 2500 and 2700 words.
Well, maybe that’s just me. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and offer you the 3500 – 4000 range. And you may colour me very impressed if you break 10 000.