Post 395: Posts and flushes.
On a day where my Darling was at work I felt I should try and think more seriously about a book based on my blog posts, I thought it was a good idea to let the computer do the hard work.
Let me tell you what I found out.
Taking the ten days blogging between 381–390 as an average for this calculation, I have written blogs between 120 & 3000 words, all 10 blogs together are 16,250 words, which in turn would be perhaps 500,000–600,000 words in the whole blog from start to finish, allowing for short poems and the ten-day holiday when I didn’t blog at all.
Half a million words.
If you average a paperback novel at about 80,000 words, that means you (my wonderful readers) have read over five novels while I blather on about myself and my life. That’s extraordinary, and well done you for reading this far.
So my shock at these numbers — however incorrect the averages could be — has made me think.
Firstly, I have been writing a book every 1.5 months on word count alone, but repetition would possibly halve that output to 3 months. I’m writing a book every three months. Wow. Who would have thought?
Anyway, let’s not get bogged down with the numbers. Let’s just think about the amazing fact that I’m now able to think differently about the possibility that I can write a book.
Crikey. That’s insane.
I now feel like a blogger. I now feel as if I could turn my life story into a book.
Going back to the initial idea I had this morning of assembling some already ready blog data, and getting a few ideas about how to figure an outline for my bio-book — is it bio-book or book bio? — I realised that I need a little bit of a hand.
My first thought was an AI bot. The new kid in town. Something most people anthropomorphise. Is it a he or a she? Would you ask it in these times of equal opportunity and gender sensitivity?
So let’s call it Hal, just for argument’s sake.
Again, going back to the pit-face of book writing/editing, I thought it best to ask Hal.
He (if he is a he) asked me to download some data from my blog, which I did. It then calculated the size of the 390 blog posts and decided to crash.
So I tried to extrapolate the data myself with help from that thirty-ninth of the whole blog.
Even this made poor old Hal cough and wheeze — bless him — which left me with the realisation that this is too much for a Hal-type computer program and I will have to resort to asking a publisher online. Well, not a publisher per se, but a publishing aid. In fact, a cousin of Hal. We could call Hal’s cousin Pal.
So Pal was ready and waiting for my input, but I was trying to log in to it and failed. Pal’s gatekeeper beat me into submission and, in the end, I gave up.
By this time I had got nowhere, but I did learn about the limits of Hal and Pal, so the day wasn’t a total waste.
My Darling came home to find me in the office/shed/spare room and I immediately said ‘she looked like death’.
She said, “I’m going to bed.”
I replied, “Ok,” and, “You do look shattered and I hope you have a good sleep.”
We pecked each other on the cheek and that was that.
I saw her heading back from the loo and thought better of doing any more Hal and Pal work today, as my head and arm were aching and, to be honest, Hal and Pal had had enough of me.
The thing was that I was getting desperate for help for this proposed book, but Hal and Pal had failed (under my poor supervision), so I thought about other ways of getting past the snag in the process.
The best way might be talking to someone who’s written books and might be able to signpost me to my nirvana. I messaged a friend of a friend who may help, we shall see. If not I’ll resort to telling someone over the phone, old-school-like.
So I went to bed with my upper-body sweats flaring badly (which are like torture just now, and I don’t know why they’re recently so bad) I tried to rest, I hoped I’d rest.
My Darling gets home at 2:30-ish and that’s about when I went to bed, then or very soon after.
I woke up later but there was an alarm going off on my phone, so I grabbed it to shut it up; I didn’t want to wake my Darling, who was still sleeping. But strangely it was dark.
Hal and Pal must have worn me out more than I thought because that alarm was for pills at 8pm.
Bloomin’ ek, I must have needed that sleep.
I took the pills and got up briefly to check on my Darling and she was still flat out.
I remembered to feed Mr Vicious, who was undeniably fed up with waiting for my appearance downstairs and nearly ate my hand off as I poured his favourite food into the blue plastic bowl that was sent flying with his eagerness.
I shut the doors and locked up downstairs and headed back up, where my Darling had woken up and wanted another hug and kiss; she did too.
I quickly told her that Mutley had been fed and not to feed him again as I went back to the warm bed and dreams of Hal and Pal; or were they nightmares.
I was asleep immediately, so we both must have needed a bit extra rest.
The flushes can’t help, I guess.
Thank you Hal, thank you Pal.
Good night all.
Take care.
PS
I guess that’s another 1200 words or there about.
Mr U.
