It’s June 28th, 2015. Week twenty five of writing 1,000 words per day of fiction. It’s time for another update!

Days 172 through 178 have been successes, with a minimum of 1,000 words per day written.

Stats for Days 172 to 178:

Day 172 – 1142 words
Day 173 – 1035 words
Day 174 – 1040 words
Day 175 – 1198 words
Day 176 – 1358 words
Day 177 – 1134 words
Day 178 – 1232 words

Total count for the year thus far is 231,723 words. Average daily word count is 1,301 words. Avalon Circle is at 40,783 words. Based on current projections, Avalon Circle is 35% complete (116,000 words).

So I didn’t have an estimate on completion prior to this week, but I mapped out the story a bit more, coming to understand the structure a bit more, pinning 116,000 words as the completion number.

A little more background on Avalon Circle and why that name will absolutely not be the final title for the story:

As I was writing, I had two distinct story ideas floating around, and for the first 30,000 words I had been following a more generic coming-of-age story, love, loss, drama, anger, fun. And I think it would have been a fine story! But as I was writing, a second idea started to form, and to take greater and greater precedence in my mind.

Instead of the more generic story, that was just the backdrop. The summer before a group of kids transition from that awkward preteen age to teenager is just the starting point, but the real story to be told was a road trip. Following just two of those kids on a journey across the country with their father and one of their friends. That journey is not a happy journey. The kids are going to a funeral, for the mother that abandoned them five years ago.

So it turned into something different along the way, and that means some (quite a bit) of the story I’d written up to that point needs to be cut way down to get to the real story, that of the road trip, to Happy Valley, Oregon, where they will confront feelings of abandonment and come to terms with death.

Because it’s the age of technology, some of those kids from the neighborhood will continue to play a role, will continue to drive motivations.

I’m excited to write this story even though it’s gone through some ambitious changes from what it was supposed to be originally. And I hope to share it with you all, much as I did with The Recluse and the Runaway.

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And remember, writing is a skill. So write the hell on, writers.