Yes, that's the number of words I've written this year for your entertainment and enjoyment. Well, mostly for that. It includes a few words I wrote just to spout off about something that bugged me.
Yesterday, as I ran past 100,000 words for November's NaNoWriMo, I also passed the 1,000,000 mark for how much I've written this year. It's not the first time I've hit that mark in a year, but this was something a little special in my mind. I started the year slowly, struggling for every word I was writing in two different works in progress. Then I discovered I'd gone back into a-fib and that explained a lot of January and February. I still managed to get The Assassin finished and released.
Then, on March 15, I had a dream so vivid that I had to stop writing anything else I'd been working on. I started writing and sending chapters to my editors at once. In a month, I had the first draft of Team Manager SWISH! written and was deep in writing Team Manager SPRINT!
I had to take short break from the Team Manager series and write Wayzgoose's Jackie the Beanstalk because it was just demanding that I write it. It was scarcely in the hands of the editors when I was back to writing Team Manager COACH! I took a drive one afternoon to let the characters work out some difficulties when my thought process was interrupted by a new character I'd never heard from before but was demanding mindshare. I finished the draft of COACH! just in time to begin Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon for NaNoWriMo. Now, 100,000 words into that story, I'm seeing the third act take shape and am confident I'll finish it by the end of the month, at which time I'll be ready to start writing Team Manager CHAMP!
It doesn't take that long to get a million words written! Fun!
I was reflecting on some of the humorous searches that come up when I'm writing. (Like "How much does a barrel of wine weigh?" or "What was the monetary unit in the third century in southern India?") I doubt there is a person who has ever searched the internet for information who hasn't at one time or another ended up with a dozen open windows, music or voices coming from an unknown source, and some anti-virus software telling them their computer is at risk. It happens more often than I care to admit.
But there are also sites that try to just be helpful and overdo it a little.
I needed information on pirates of the Indian Ocean in the first century CE. Wow! What a bunch of useless information! Until I came upon an academic paper titled "Before the Somali Threat: Piracy in the Ancient Indian Ocean." How often do you find such a specific answer to a question? I downloaded and read the paper with great interest. And it was good. I dealt with the subject and moved on.
Nearly every day since then, I have received a suggestion that "A related paper is available on Academia." Here are some of the papers that have been recommended to me this week.
"Early Greek and Latin Sources on the Indian Ocean and Eastern Africa"
"Lost Port of the Red Sea"
"The Notion τὸ πέρας τῆς ἀνακομιδῆς and the Location of Ptolemais of the Hunts in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea"
"The Coastal Arabia and the Adjacent Sea Basins in the 'Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'"
"The Nabataean in Eastern Desert in Egypt"
Since it was mentioned twice, I had to look up 'Periplus of the Erythraen Sea' and found that it was a document that recorded the distances and sailing time from port to port around the Indian Ocean. Fascinating.
And you thought I just wrote entertaining adventures with a little sex tossed in!
Enjoy!