 Hello. It has been a while. It has been a year. And if you've forgotten who I am, my name is Jackie. I'm an aspiring writer and I am back in front of the camera. Where have I been? Not the topic of today's video, but I was basically burnt out. Hence the break from YouTube. Why am I back? Well, I recently decided that I'm going to be self-publishing Powerless, which is my YA Superheroes Meet the Russian Mafia book in 2023. The release date is planned for June. More details to come. But there is one small caveat, which is there are a couple of things I left open in that book with the intention that there would be a sequel. And I never wrote the sequel because I was originally planning to be traditionally published. And I know there's no point in writing a sequel for a book that might only get a one book deal. So I just left it open with the understanding that hopefully I'd get a publisher and we could discuss whether it was one book or two books. And if it was one book, I'd need to make three changes to the first book in order to make it standalone. If it's not, then I could do a sequel and wrap up those things in book two. Now, if I'm self-publishing, then I can do it as two books. The problem is I don't know if I can do a sequel. I've never tried to do a sequel before. And I need to have that figured out before I get my book to copy edits because I need to have finished the book before it goes to copy edits. So today is the 24th of December. The next two weeks are going to be very quiet with work because it's the holiday period. Most people are off. I will still be working because I'm on the website team. So if something goes wrong, we need to be able to put emergency banners and things on the website. Even though there will be some work to do, it's also going to be very quiet. There also aren't that many workdays because of the public holidays. So I'm treating this as a two-week break. In this two week break, I'm going to attempt to write Powerless 2, the sequel to Powerless 1. And in this video, I will be chronicling that journey. So let's see if Jackie can write a book in 16 days. For some background, I am not starting from zero. I have been thinking about this book for a while over the past month or so. I have been outlining it. I've got a corkboard on my wall with cards and various scenes. I have a very detailed spreadsheet. So the book is outlined, and it's actually outlined in more detail than anything I've written before. So I feel pretty confident that I can actually write it. I also have a document with about 10,000 words that have already been done. This is just various scribblings. It includes the notes from the outline, but also a couple of scenes where I was inspired to write them, so I wrote them. So it's not starting from zero. I do have a head start, but the bulk of the draft is going to be written in the next two weeks. I'm expecting the full draft will be 70 or so thousand words, because the first draft of Powerless was 68,000 words. 70,000 minus the 10,000 I already have is 60,000 words. That is 3,750 words a day for the next 16 days, which I feel like that's very doable. I haven't written that much in a day for a very long time, but I feel like I could. So today is day one. I just had a session and I found it like the 40 minute mark, which I had about 800, 900 words. Then I started feeling like I was running into a wall, so my writing muscles have definitely atrophied over the last year or so, but hopefully when I get into the swing of things, I will be able to write more. So I have set up like an anime style tracker in a spreadsheet with what my target is for each day and the cumulative target. So that's a very straight, linear line. I'm expecting my progress will be more exponential like this because the first few days will be getting into it. I'll write less, but as I get into it, I will write more day by day. At least that's the plan. So if everything goes well, by the 8th of January, I will have a first draft of this book. I do not expect to be a perfect, I do not expect it to be publishable, but I expect from the first draft, I'll know whether I can turn it into a publishable book and that will tell me whether or not I need to make the changes to Powerless One before I send it to my editor. So that is my next two weeks. So I'm going for a walk because writing wasn't going well and I do have all day to the 8th. So I might as well take the opportunity to get out before it gets too warm, but I don't think I mentioned earlier that I'm back in Australia. I've been back for about two months a little bit more and walks aren't the same when you're walking through suburbs versus walking along Lake Geneva or walking through the medieval old town in Tallinn. It is time for session two. Last session, I only did 908 words. That's almost 3000 words off where I need to be today. So hopefully I can get a little bit more out in this session. So I think I've come to the end of my productive time with that session. It's been about two and a half hours, have maybe two hours of productive time in there because I lost way too much time trying to create a playlist for Powerless because I didn't have one before. So 1823 words, which means I'm at about 2700 words. So it's a thousand below where I should be for the day, but for the last, you know, 10, 20 minutes, I've really been pushing to try and get it out. So I think take a break now. I have some ceilings to paint because we had some lights replaced and had to patch some holes in the ceiling. So take a break, paint some ceilings and see how I feel later today. Hello and happy Christmas. I did a writing session this morning and it actually went really well. In fact, it's the best one I've had working on this book, including all of the previous random scribbles I've done. Let's go back to Powerless. So when I was writing Powerless, I had this thing where the first, until I got really into it, the first 20 minutes of any writing session would be really uncomfortable and I'd have to get through it, but then I'd get into a flow. And what happened yesterday when I was writing Powerless too was it was awkward at the beginning and then I felt like, like the length of the session that was good was about 20 minutes and then after that it was hard again. And if I didn't have a tight deadline to write the book, that would be fine because I'd have weeks to get into it. But I was sort of like, well, I've got two weeks to get this whole thing done. I don't have the luxury of time to get into it. So even though it was only day one, I was a little bit worried, but today, like I had a really good two hour session. I wrote two and a half thousand words. I'm happy with a lot of them. We've got like our first reveal of the book, which is really exciting because Powerless one is sort of reveal after reveal after reveal. So I'm feeling good. Now we're heading to Christmas lunch in South Melbourne with my husband's family. And after that, we'll come back home for a bit. I'll try and get a bit more writing in because I'm short of my target for the day. I'd like to get another two thousand words because that'll help make up for yesterday's shortfall as well. And then after that, we'll have dinner at my family's. So something I need to learn to do again is to get B roll because I forgot to get footage at lunch. Now we've got about an hour and a half before we need to leave for my parents' place for dinner. And I like, I just want a little nap. I want to go to bed and watch YouTube videos, Drew's napping at the moment. But I know I'm going to be even less likely to write when I get home from dinner. So going to attempt to write now, we'll see how it goes. So it's been about 45 minutes. I've written 1,290 words. So I was hoping to do about 2,000 words this afternoon. But this, the scene I was working on was a fairly short scene, like it's a, that 1,290 words is an entire chapter, which is a fairly short chapter for me. Hopefully it'll get longer in revisions. But I feel like this is a good place to tie up for today. I feel like if I keep pushing beyond now, it's just not going to get very far. So let's update this spreadsheet and see how I'm tracking. I am behind, but not that far behind. I can easily catch up in the next 16 days. This is my special powerless two challenge. So you can see I've got my 16 days, my goal of 3,750 words a day. This is what it'll look like if I hit that every day. So it's from 3,750 up to 60,000. And here are where my actuals go. So you can see if things go on track, this little blue line in the graph is what I should do every day. And this linear line is the cumulative total. So let's add yesterday's and today's information. Yesterday was 2731. And today was 3839. So we can see I should be at 7,500 words. I'm at 6,500, so I'm 1,000 behind. So based on what I've written so far, for the next 14 days, I need to do an average of 3,816 words per day in order to still hit that 60,000 words. So this is what 66 words over my original daily target. So still very doable. It's going to be interesting to see if in a week's time, I'm still saying it's very doable. Now I'm going to relax for the next 30 minutes before we go to the next Christmas thing and my parents. Hello, it is the 27th of December, which is actually a holiday here. But I am at the station planning to head into the office because it's going to get to 35 degrees today, which is a bit hot for me after four years in Europe. So I'm going to the office where there's air conditioning and I'm planning to do some writing there. Yesterday went well. I did 4,025 words. So I'm still running behind where I would have been if I did the full amount on the first day, but it was over like the new daily target, which was about 3,800 words. So still on track. I don't feel like I'm at the point where momentum's building yet with the book, but I also know that the beginning of powerless one was like this. So I'm not too worried. I've got one more chapter and then sort of the, you know, catalyst for the plot happens. So then I think it will start building. And I do feel like this first bit is going to need a bit of rework. So it feels like there's more forward momentum rather than just a series of vignettes. But that is a future Jackie problem for now. I'm just getting the words down. So I had my workout, had a smoothie and now I'm at the office. There is no one here. Time to start writing. So it's what five to one and it would be great if I could do another 4,000 words today. So it's now 4,13, which means it's been three hours and 20 minutes. Is that right? Yes, I can math. Three hours and 20 minutes. Since I started writing, I have 4,348 words. So that's great. I'm over my target. I spent a lot of time on a makeover scene, which is very surprising. Like I spent more time on the makeover scene, which doesn't really move the plot at all. It's just a bit of fun. Then I did on the scene that actually starts raising stakes and kicking things into gear. But that's okay. This can be fixed in revisions. Anyway, I'm on target. I think I've earned some gelato. So I'm going to get a gelato and then head home. Good morning. It's about 7.30 a.m. on the 27th. I'm not sure if my mic is picking up the pigeon outside. There's a pigeon cooing away. Yesterday was very hot. I think it ended up getting to 38 degrees Celsius, which I think is like 100 Fahrenheit for any Americans watching. And last night was very hot. So I moved my mattress out to the living room so I could sleep under the aircon. So a little bit tired, but feeling pretty good considering. Now, since I started this challenge, I've been a bit lazy when it comes to managing my time, where if I've had a free day, I tend to just be a blog for the first few hours like checking Instagram and YouTube and so on, which I've been able to do because I've had this time off. But I'd prefer to get into a routine, something more like Christmas, where I know I've got things on for the day, so I need to use the time I have left wisely. So today is my last full day off. Tomorrow I'm back at work. We'll be back at the office. There might actually be some other people there. So I do have the option of just bludging around for a few hours in bed. I mean, I've been up for an hour and a half already and haven't done anything. So I've already had the lazy time. When it comes to my progress, my chart is actually looking really good. I'm on track. The daily target to keep up at the moment is down to 3,725 words. I'm actually a little bit ahead of where I should be. The one concern I have is because I'm so focused on the word count. Sometimes I feel like I'm padding out these scenes at the beginning of the book. And if I keep doing this, I could potentially hit the word count without finishing the book. And the real goal is to finish the book because I need to know if I can finish it before I send powerless one to my copy editor. So with that in mind, let's see how I go today. It's been about an hour and a half. I've done 1500 words, which is a bit slower than I've been tracking in the last couple of days. But I'm also getting a bit warm. See the redness. So I'm going to move to a cooler room in the house. I can hear it's just starting to drizzle though. So I think like it's maybe 28 degrees now. And I think from here it's just going to drop. So can't wait for it to be cool and the house to get cool. But anyway, it makes sense to take a break now because we're getting into like the highest part of the book. My previous superhero book, powerless, started as a superhero book and in the midpoint turned into a little bit of a heist book. And this one's similar. There's a location they need to get to they need to figure out how to get in. So now I'm going to do some research about different secure locations in the world. So I can basically steal their security measures, put them onto this building and hopefully create some interesting challenges for the characters to solve. And then the plan is to have another writing session later today to get to my 3,700, 800 word target for the day. So it's 5pm. I did my research earlier today and then drew an eye went out for lunch. And then when I got back from lunch, I decided, okay, I'm going to do a couple of non book productive things before I get into the book. And one of them was I need to return one of the Christmas gifts I got, unfortunately. And I discovered that they only return for a store credit, which is bad because without getting into specifics, this website sells one thing. And if the thing didn't work for me, I don't want another version of the same thing. And the reason I told my mum it was okay to buy from this place was because on the product page, it said they had a 30 day trial. It didn't say that 30 day trial meant something could be exchanged for a store credit, you assume return, like as long as it's in unused condition, no questions asked. And now I'm like, I know, it's like not that big a deal. It just means we wasted some money, which is always annoying. But I don't know, it really deflated me and I really struggled to get into writing after that. So I've done about another 1500 words, which means I'm sitting at 3000 words for the day. And it's just not going well. I'm not getting anywhere. On one hand, I'm at the point where now the plot is really kicking off. We're getting into heist planning mode. I've got some cool ideas about like the destination or target of the heist. So figuring out all the obstacles with that has been fun. But yeah, the writing just hasn't been happening well. So on one hand, the writing hasn't been happening well to at the point where I'm now in the book, everything should have been established. All of the setup stuff should have been done in terms of character dynamics and motivations and stakes. And I feel like it hasn't. I don't know if it's because it's a first draft. Obviously it's a first draft. Not going to be perfect. It will need revisions. But I'm not sure if it's because it's a first draft or if it's because I'm trying to write in two points of view because it means if I compare it to powerless one, I have half the amount of time with Hannah and half the amount of time with her sister, Maria, who's another point of view character. So even though I've got, let's say, 20,000 words, that's only 10,000 words with each of them, which I don't know if it's not enough time to get across what I want to get across, or if there is enough time, I just need to work on it in revisions. I'm in a weird space today, so I'm going to stop writing now, knowing that I'm falling behind my target today. But what I do want to do is outline what I'm going to be writing tomorrow because tomorrow I am back at work. I'm expecting it will be a quiet day because everyone's on holiday. So unless there's emergency that we need to communicate, I shouldn't have too much to do. So hopefully it's a quiet day and I can do a bit of writing tomorrow. But if there is stuff to do, at least I'll have outlined my plans today, and that means tomorrow when I sit down to write it should be really productive. So I'm back at work, but as expected, there's not too much to do because it's Christmas, no one's working and nothing's gone wrong, thankfully. So I'm in the office, there are like another three people there, it's so quiet that the city is also quiet, as you can see. It's also colder, much greater day than it was a couple of days ago. But anyway, I've caught up on all my emails and thought I would start working on the book, but I'm running into problems. So I'm facing two problems today. One is the fact that it's a sequel, and there's a whole lot of like meaning and weight in my head because I know these characters, I know this world, and I'm really struggling to infuse that on the page. I feel like a breeder isn't going to get the significance of everything. And that might be something that can be addressed in revisions, but I know it feels different to the first book where I was layering things on. Now I feel like I have all of the layers, and I just don't know how to execute them rather than discovering as I go. The second issue is more of a total one, because in theory there should be a darker book than the first. The threat is greater, but at the same time, I want to have a romance in this book. Like there are two characters who I think are a really good match and I want them to be together, and I want to have like some giddy fun romance sections, but I don't know how to do that when it's like serious, and we potentially are dealing with like weapons of mass destruction, and I can't even say writing isn't going well today, like thinking is not going well today. So I've decided to go out and get some chocolate for motivation. I'm back, I have my dark scorched almonds, and I think I'm going to try and use them to motivate myself. One of the writers I follow, it might be Myrlaffity, uses M&M square. Every time she hits a certain amount of words, she has like an M&M, so I can have like a row of my dark chocolate almonds in front of me, and then every time I hit like 100 words, I have an almond. Problem with that is if I want to do 4,000 words today, that's 40 chocolate almonds, which might be a bit much, so I might need to have a sliding scale with more words. I do the harder it is to earn one of these, but we'll see how it goes. It is Friday, December 30th, it is day seven, I believe, of this challenge, and I don't want to write my book. So yesterday, as you know, I went to the office, I did a couple of hours of the morning, went to the gym, had a nice long gym session, then did another couple of hours in the afternoon. I wrote 4,038 words, so great, still on track. But yesterday was a struggle, the day before was a struggle, and what ended up happening yesterday was in the morning I did like the next scene in the book, and then in the afternoon, I just couldn't make any headway with the following one, so I jumped forward and wrote a couple of like conversations that I think are going to happen later in the book. The challenge with doing that is that it means I hit the word count, but it increases the risk of me writing things that will not be used in the book, and that is not a good thing, because this is not an anorim, the goal, I mean yes there is a word count goal, but the word count goal is in service of finishing the first draft of this book. If I hit my 60,000 words, 70,000 including what I had before I started, and have not finished the book, I've not achieved my goal basically, so moving forward in the story is far more important than getting the words down, and then I thought okay well the last couple of days I struggled with writing, I think if I just keep trying to push going forward I'm going to end up with a lot of words, but not a book, so what would make sense is going back to the beginning and reading through what I have and starting to polish it a little bit, even though you're not meant to like reread and revise in the first draft, it is something that's worked for me in the past. The challenge I have now, well two challenges, one is that if I go back and do that, like I've got 22,000 words that have done this part of this challenge, so going back through that trying to polish that probably means I won't write that much today, and if I don't write that much today that means I need to write more for the rest of the days to catch up, this happens in that arrival as well, but when you've got 30 days you've got more time to make it up, I have what eight, nine days left after this, so there's not a lot of time to make it up, I think if I don't write today it basically means my daily target goes up by a thousand words every day, and you know if I miss another day, oh god I don't even want to think about that, so that's the one downside, but the bigger problem is I don't want to, I have no interest in reading the book so far, I feel like if I do read it I'm going to go through it and find it kind of worthy and hate it. It is the 31st of December, I did nothing yesterday, I actually went with my walk and then I got back and I said you know I feel like outlining's okay, and I recorded a clip saying I felt like outlining would be okay, and then I did not outline, and that is obviously not great for the challenge, but I'm starting to realize more as I get older is if you really don't want to do something, especially if it's something you usually like to do, like I usually like to write, I like this story, I like these characters, and yet I had so much resistance towards doing anything yesterday, like maybe it means you need a break, so I took a break yesterday and what was really nice was in the evening around maybe 7 p.m. I just started having all of these ideas, so when I went to sleep I was really excited to get back to writing today, so this morning I got up, I wrote from about 8.30 until 1, I had a small break in the middle there and did 4,405 words, it is now 2 o'clock, 2.07 to be precise, which means I've still got plenty of the day left, so it'd be great if I could get another 4,000 words done today because then that'll make up for missing yesterday, however if I do anything above 2,000 I'm going to call that a win. So it's been an hour and 45 minutes, I've written 1,845 words which brings my total for today up to 6,250, so I'm really happy with that and I actually still feel like I could continue writing and it is only what 4 p.m. so I still got time to write. I am at a little bit of a challenging part in the book because I know like the next major event that needs to happen, but I had a couple of things I wanted to have to happen between now which is like okay, we have the heist plan and the heist so I need to do a little bit of outlining to figure out how those different bits are going to come together because I've sort of got like these little vignettes, there's like a moment from Maria's point of view, a moment from Hannah's point of view and I don't know if I've got enough for an entire chapter for each of them so I need to do a little bit of playing there. I think one of the things that worked well today was that I did a couple of chapters and they were all from Hannah's point of view which makes me think that maybe I need to make the entire book from her point of view. I mean that would be a little bit sad because like there is a story I want to tell from Maria's point of view. I think I could change it to a single POV book and it might be better as a single POV book. I'm going to continue seeing how I go though, switching back and forth. I think once I've got a first draft and I can see how much is in each person's point of view it'll be easier to decide what to do next. In any case I'm very happy with the amount I've done today so I'll update the chart. We have 6,250 words which brings my cumulative total to 28,255 words and it brings my required daily target to 3,968 words so given that I had an entire day off yesterday and today I'm almost at the exact same like target daily word count I needed when I first started so I'm only 200 words a day off that which is pretty good. I think it shows the value in having a day off. I am a little bit worried about what's going to happen if I get to the end of next week and the same thing happens because I am incapable of writing for seven days in a row and I think I can worry about that in a week's time. For now I've just got a good week of writing to get through. The other small challenge I have is now I'm technically more than halfway through this challenge. I'm not more than halfway through the book so yeah we'll see we'll see what happens. I have written some bits that come later in the book so maybe that'll help. Maybe my target word count is just inaccurate for the scope of what I want to cover. Maybe I should be looking at 80 or 90,000 words. We'll see how it unfolds. Good morning and happy new year. It is just coming up to 10 a.m. on the 1st of January 2023 and I don't know about you but I think 2023 is going to be a really good year. I felt like 2020 was going to be a good year and it wasn't for most people I don't think but I feel like obviously COVID is still a thing, pandemic is still happening but it's become more of more of part of life as normal. I just feel optimistic about the year ahead. I also have powerless coming out so that's exciting. Today I woke up at 5.30 and really wanted to write and what's interesting about that is I don't usually wake up wanting to write immediately like I take a little while to wake up and get into the day and I've been able to do that because it's been a slow week with lots of holidays, very little work but yeah today I woke up at 5.30 and wanted to write and technology got in my way because my computer decided to blue screen and needed to restart and that lost some time so I did end up writing. I think I started about quarter to seven and I've written 2,129 words so far then took a break to have some breakfast and now I'm getting back into it. The strange thing though is that even though I woke up really excited to write the writing wasn't great like I felt like it wasn't great. I wasn't sure how to create tension in the scene. Basically I have the point of view character is acting as a distraction while a mini heist is going on in the background and I thought like the way she could feel more a part of it was by like having her earpiece in so she can hear everything that's going wrong outside and she needs to stall the person she's distracting but I felt like yesterday when I was thinking about it I had like really clear dialogue in everything in my head and today I couldn't remember any of the things that went wrong because that's what happens with a heist you have a plan and it goes wrong. I wrote it wasn't great but that's okay because it's a first draft and I'm at the point where I'm really looking forward to revising this book and I'm already thinking about revisions as I write the first draft. Obviously I don't want to get too much into that now because I want to get the first draft done but I'm feeling better than I was a couple of days ago like I think there might be hope for this book so the goal for today is another 2,000 words at least hopefully more but it is hitting the mid 30s today as well and I know I'm going to be a bit less motivated when it's hot so we'll start with the 2,000 words and see how it goes. I've written for another 80 minutes I've done about 1200 words which is a pretty slow pace for me. One of the things I've noticed over the past week or so is I seem to be averaging about a thousand words an hour. What happened this time though was I ended up having to delete like not a lot but maybe 500 words that I'd already done in the scene that I'd written because I really wanted it to end on a certain emotional note and it wasn't like it was supposed to be a high emotional note at the end and then instead it ended up being a low one which didn't lead well into what was happening next. Now that's working which means we have everything we need for a successful heist and I know there's an argument that needs to happen between now and the heist to set things up for double crosses a bit strong but you know for things to not go to plan and I'm not really sure how to do it because I've actually already written the argument it was something I wrote earlier maybe a few months ago when I had the inspiration to do it but I'm not sure how to fit it in and this is one of the challenges like I always have which is getting from one key event to the next key event when you can't go straight from one thing to the other because logistically it doesn't make sense and in this case emotionally it doesn't make sense so we need some scaffolding for this argument we need the crew to be doing something when this argument happens. I'm just not sure what. In fact there are two arguments that I had planned for this bit and one's related to like a vodka drinking ritual that we established in the last book which is sort of pre heist successful plan let's drink vodka because Russians and this may sound like a cliche but when I was working for a Russian company in Estonia we actually did a vodka dégustation as my cow leadership team bonding event so vodka's a thing I don't think I can have both of these things because I don't think there's enough for each of them to be a separate scene but it doesn't make sense for them to be the same scene because if they're the same scene then I need to add an extra scene in between the second argument I have planned in the heist so basically what we can have happen is they get home from the current scene where they've finished gathering the materials, have the celebratory vodka scene which leads to an argument, the argument prompts this is really hard to do without spoiling anything the argument prompts someone to do something that then leads to the next argument and then there's like a lull between that argument and the heist whereas if I get rid of the vodka scene then we can go to the next day have the argument triggered by something else I think we can put a conversation in there fairly easily so the argument is triggered argument happens and then the heist happens directly after the argument like on the same day which I think I can make work I'll have to have a little think about logistics to make sure everyone's ready to go at the same time even though this has happened but I think I can make that work problem is I can't do that if we have the vodka scene because that means everything's happening in the middle of the night and the whole heist plan is around a banquet so we're talking earlier in the evening not after midnight I need to do a little bit more brainstorming and I do need to do more writing today because I did only do 1200 words so I'm sitting at 3341 for the day so it would be good to get another thousand words before I finish up I'm now sitting on the very ergonomic couch because the office is getting a little bit hot it is 2 40 p.m and I spent the last hour writing and I was a bit naughty like I did start with the best of intentions my plan was to just continue from where I left off and do the linking scenes between where I am now and the beginning of the heist sequence and then tomorrow I could start on the heist but there's this thing that happens later in the book and I just felt like writing it and that ended up being another 2000 words almost yeah 1922 words so I'm now at 5262 5263 words for today which is great it means I'm ahead of my target and I don't think I'm going to finish this book in the next week because I did this piece which is supposed to be like a chapter and there are some bits when I need to expand it more and it just feels like it needs to be a lot bigger than it is which means the book probably needs to be a lot bigger than what I'd expected I don't know my documents almost at 45000 words and I don't feel like I've written half of this story I'm not at the halfway point yet because the banquet is supposed to be the midpoint having said that I have written things later in the book so that means the second half might be faster but who knows I kept adding to the first half as I was writing to it so might keep adding to the second half so last night was a pretty hot one I ended up moving onto the couch at about 2 a.m and I think I would have been lucky to get four hours of sleep last night so very tired saw a neck and I'm like universe like what the hell I have a book to write I don't have time for these sorts of shenanigans today might be a anything is better than nothing day rather than a let's hit the target day so I did two sessions this morning the first one went pretty well it was just under 2000 words the second one did not go so well my husband woke up and he is lovely that's why we're married but he's also very distracting so I did maybe another 400 words in that time so now I'm heading out for lunch with a friend and then when I get back this afternoon I'm hoping to catch up on the rest of the words I need though the challenge I'm running into now is I mean it's the challenge of the whole project I don't know how to do a multi-point of view book because now I've ended up with a couple of chapters in Hannah's head in a row and I feel like it's too much but I don't know how to have an extra chapter from Maria's point of view to break it up because I can imagine a conversation that's happening in this sequence but the conversation is not enough for a chapter but these are future Jackie problems these are revision problems it's not something that should stop me from getting the first draft done so I'm just leaving the office it was a slightly busier day as people start to come back from the Christmas break but next week's one thing's really pick up so I an hour and a half before lunch and then another half hour after lunch hello this is future editing Jackie so unfortunately in this clip the wind is so bad you can barely hear me so I'm doing a little voiceover what I'm talking about here is wanting to get up to the final battle scene but the challenge is I haven't choreographed the battle scene and the same thing happened with powerless one where I knew there had to be an epic final battle for the climax but it wasn't until I got to that point in the book it's like oh other than writing epic final battle I haven't actually outlined this so while I want to get to that point I know there's thinking that needs to be done in order to successfully write that point then I also complain about the fact that it's my brother's birthday so after this I need to go to dinner at my parents place which is great love my family but not so great for the writing challenge good morning it is Wednesday the 4th of January which means I have five days left in this challenge including today and I'm currently sitting at 40,368 words so yesterday I did 2,825 words which means a bit under 20,000 words until the end of the challenge so that's 4,000 words a day I think this is doable as I think I've mentioned already I do think I can hit the word count goal I don't think that's going to be enough to finish the book but I am feeling good about today because yesterday I was struggling with this sort of midpoint battle scene because originally it was supposed to be a heist where they break into the area where an event is happening and fighting would break out and then there'd be the big midpoint twist and the plan they came up with to get into this building means they don't actually need to break in like they're basically going through the front door so it all feels very mundane like yes we planned this and this happened and I've just thought of like a twist that can make everything go wrong and that will trigger the chaos so now that I have that I'm feeling pretty good I actually have a couple of thousand words that I wrote a few months ago in fact this scene is the reason I wanted to do the sequel so I've already got a couple of thousand words at this scene so my goal today is to get from where I am now to that point maybe the scene after that should hit my 4,000 words then I need to figure out the next bit so I've done about 2,600 words today and I'm somehow no further in the book than I was yesterday but I'll discuss that when we get to the end of the day but last week I think I've proactively booked an infrared sauna thinking my brain could probably use the break and today I'm very thankful to pass Jackie for that so I'm going to have a sauna, a read and then back to writing this afternoon and now I am tired it is six o'clock and I did two writing sessions and I've done 4,841 words which is good so I'm back slightly ahead of my target again I think I'm about 200 words over like I said earlier still think I'm going to hit the word count goal what's a little bit frustrating about today is that I added almost 5,000 words to the book but I'm no further ahead in the story yesterday I was writing like the beginning of this you know banquet heist battle scene and had two of the first little bits leading into it then today this morning I basically fleshed them out and added the linking bits and then I got to this 2,000 word I don't need this is how tired I am I don't even remember if I said this today so I might be repeating myself but I had this 2,000 word pivotal moment in the book which is the reason I wanted to write the book which was already written I wrote it months ago when I had the idea so I wrote the lead up to that and joined everything together went through that section and then got to the next scene which is something I wrote last week when on one of the early days when I think I was struggling I wrote it because I had the idea and yeah I've sort of gone into the aftermath of the banquet battle now and it's getting into like part three of the book and the next phase of the plot so I've got almost an extra 5,000 words but I don't have any new content which is very strange so I'm basically at 45,000 words for this challenge which is great that means crap that means I've only got 15,000 words to go yeah I'm definitely not going to finish the book like that I cannot finish the book in another 15,000 words okay well four more days we'll see how they go I think the word count yes finishing the book probably not but we'll see so it's Thursday back in the city heading to the office and I'm running a bit late because there were cancellations on my train line but it comes to right I'm so tired my brain feels like it's completely spent and I'm also at the part of the book where I realise I don't have a very clear outline so everything is fairly clearly mapped out up to the point right now there were some questions around the earlier hosting and I added some scenes but I probably had about 80% of the scenes listed in this part of the book I have a list of things that I know that need to happen in terms of relationship progression and revelations and so on I don't have scenes but these are going to happen and one big example of this is there's a moment where the main character discovers the villains dastardly plan I don't know what the dastardly plan is I just know that she needs to make this discovery in order to kick off the climate battle so given that this is the position I'm in I'm actually not sure how I'm going to write it so today like obviously working but then I think the priority needs to be outlining this part of the book so I have something to write so it's around 6.30 and I just got home and I haven't written anything today I mean I actually had work to do like imagine that and before anyone criticises me that is sarcasm I know I have a job I'm going to work I should be doing the work and of course like when there's work coming in I do it it's just because this was over the Christmas period and I was part of the skeleton crew like I was expecting there wouldn't be much to do which there hasn't been until today but yeah today um clearly more people are getting back online so there were a whole lot of tasks to do in the morning then a few meetings in the afternoon and then it was the end of the day and I hadn't written and now it's the evening so now I'm feeling really worn out from work and I honestly don't think I'm going to write anything today especially since like I mentioned this morning I still need to outline this part of the book more thoroughly so I think I'm just going to take the evening off and that will give me three days to do the last 15,000 words you can say 1500 words no 15,000 a little bit different it is Friday the 6th of January which means there are three days left in this challenge you know 15,000 words to go last weekend on Sunday when I'd caught up after taking last Friday off I was feeling pretty confident about hitting the word count challenge after not writing anything yesterday though I'm feeling a little bit less confident I definitely don't think I'm going to finish the book my goal beyond the 15,000 words would be to get to the final battle scene because I think that's something I can come back to fairly easily because I know how everything will be resolved it's really the lead up that is important but yeah that means 5,000 words a day for the next three days and I can do a 5,000 word day I just don't know if I can do three 5,000 word days in a row especially for a part of the book that is much less clear than earlier parts of the book and I also don't have the ability to cheat this time like I can't jump forward and write bits that I've been thinking about because I've already done those bits when I was struggling earlier in the challenge so these three days are going to be interesting I am annoyed that I didn't write anything yesterday and it's not even annoyed at me because the only thing I really could have done differently was get up earlier like if I'd gotten up at 5 a.m I could have done some writing before work and yeah that's on me assuming that I'd have time in the workday which I didn't have but it's more just you know annoying with the situation like which I have no right to be again I could have gotten up early there are things I could have done to give myself some breathing room should something have not gone to plan and the thing that didn't go to plan was that I couldn't write during the day but yeah I'm just like if this was going to happen why couldn't it have happened earlier when there was more time to make up for it it is what it is so today fortunately I don't have any meetings I do have a few things I need to take care of so I'm going to try and get those done in the next hour or so and then hopefully I'll have the rest of the day free to help mine this part of the book and start writing it so it's coming up to four o'clock I've done an hour and a half of writing and it's gone really badly I've done less than 900 words in that time average per minute is like nine words per minute and this is the slowest I've written this entire challenge and part of it is that this part of the book is set in a lab and it's supposed to be like a really futuristic cutting-edge lab it's meant to be this really exciting thing basically a new opportunity I am not a scientist I have no science background the last time I did anything scientific was in high school so my knowledge is very out of date so I've got a character and a world where genetics and science is very important but I don't have the knowledge so part of the reason I'm getting stuck is because I've been googling to see how labs are structured and what exciting things are happening in genetics that I can incorporate but it means that I don't know I'm just stuck like I don't know how to make this part of the book exciting for someone who's an aspiring geneticist who walks in and goes this is the best opportunity I've ever had I don't want to mess it up like I don't know how to create that atmosphere because I don't know what is like what would be an exciting opportunity I just um I just don't know how to move forward at this point the writing that I have done was expanding on like sort of the welcome to the lab scene that I already had some of it I was just fleshing it out a bit more with my research on what would be in a lab so I have a welcome to the lab chapter that is supposed to be like getting to work and realizing that you know she has a real place here type of thing and she's doing exciting work and I have no idea what should go in there because I don't have this knowledge and I just don't know how I'm going to move forward with this part of the book without that knowledge and I don't have time to gain that knowledge because I have three days well less than three days it's almost the end of day ones I've got two days left to do another 9,000 words no not I've got two days left to do another 14,000 words two days ago on Wednesday I was feeling very confident about this challenge and now I'm not feeling very confident anymore and I don't know how to turn that around so at this point you probably notice that this video is getting rather long so I've split out the last 48 hours of this challenge into a separate video which will be up on my channel in the next few days so please keep your eyes out for that and let me know in the comments do you think I hit the 60,000 word target do you think I finished the book I'm curious to see what you think given how things are going so far so I will see you for the last 48 hours in the next video