My winter break begins now

I did some more transcribing last night, so I'm over 16,000 in HS, what will be the master's thesis.

Today is basically my last day of running around sans holidays. All the other days I plan to write. Working out some very basic math, I can reach about 80,000 before the first day of class if I write about 2,300 words. I can get to around 100,000 words if I do closer to 3,500 words per day. That I believe, includes taking Christmas and possibly New Year's Eve off. If I write on those days, I have a slightly smaller daily word count.

I don't do the word counts and minimums as a hard and fast requirement, though. Some days are better than others, but it does give me an idea if i am consistently short, that I'll need to pick up the pace, or if I cna take it easy later, because perhaps I'm ahead.

I don't think the word counts include today, either. I have to go to university and run some errands. Then I'm going to finish up my Christmas shopping and hang out with a friend of mine. She lives in town and I live in what I guess are the suburbs (although it doesn't really feel like it), and I don't go into town often. I take the bus through it for class, but I usually stay on campus if I have free time. So yes, today I have time, and she has time, and we are hanging out.

Tomorrow I write. But today, with two long bus trips, I will try to plot out the rest the book. I know what I've done and what I need to do to fill in the gaps between the already-written scenes. But if I'm going to really focus almost every day, I need to know where I'm going. And I've introduced a number of characters that need to show up again, and I need to suggest the connections between them (playing with who's your friend and who isn't), red herrings and what not, and if I know where those hints will come in ahead of time, I (hopefully) won't be staring at my computer screen dumbly for hours at a time, only to start playing computer games (right now I am slightl obsessed with mahjong tiles) in an attempt to clear my mind.

I know that's bs, but if I have something to riff I can avoid it anyway.

Happy writing. Wish me luck.