Personal Highlights and Government Censors

As I recall I wasn't much of a text-book highlighter when I was in high school or college. ("Gee, Bill, maybe that's because you're so old the only felt-tip marker color was black and using that would make it look like most of the chapter had been redacted by some government censor.") I suppose I did some underlining. With a pencil.

One of the (many) strange aspects of the brave new world of e-books is a reader can highlight a passage from your book and you -- and the world -- can see what he or she chose. Here are the top three for Nine Week Novel:

--Week One: 300 words per day for six days. (Take the seventh day off. You’ll have completed 1,800 words. Good for you!) Week Two: 400 words per day for six days. (And another day off. Now you’ll be up to 4,200 words.) Weeks Three through Nine: 500 words six days a week and that seventh day off.

--abandoned the comfortable, theoretical world of “writing a novel” and entered the uncomfortable,
real world of “novel writing.”

--A word count works much better than a time requirement. (No doodling on the paper or dawdling
on the Internet and calling it “writing.”)

I like all three. If you stick with those you can end up with a novel. You can end up with a novel.

Just keep writing.