Things more important than words and streaks and novels and such. And the greatest of these are family and friends. Yesterday I focused on them. I got up early and continued ripping out old decking so that it would be safe for small children to play on. Safe is, of course, a relative term. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go barefoot on the ground I cleared. I think I picked up all the nails and brackets that I removed, but I also picked up several rusty nails from the previous deck installation.

I spent the morning alternating between tearing out decking in the sun to tacking in baseboards and flooring transitions, cleaning and reframing posters, making spinach dip, this time know as seaweed dip for the first grandchild’s first birthday and in general helping my partner, Elena, ready her house for an onslaught of family and friends. The day was lovely, but hot. The work was arduous, but utterly worthwhile. But it wasn’t until I sat down, I think for the second time during the day, to show my mom how to create a blog post that I wrote any words. And that was incidental rather than intentional. Do I begrudge this day? NO! Absolutely not.

I wrote TWENTY-SIX [26] new words yesterday, so I guess I can continue my streak of writing days at 47. But I definitely lost the streak of 500+ word days at 34 days. 34 days was a much longer streak than the previous 11 day streak, so progress is being made. Lots of progress, in fact. I’m still, despite two days under 500 words, averaging 654.40 per day! I’m a third of the way to my 182,500 word goal for 2014. I am 90% complete on my Deserted Lands novella:Toils and Snares. I am nearly 2/3 done with the first draft of Straight Into Darkness. So, today, I reboot to the head my goal of writing 500+ words a day. I intend to reboot it with a vengeance starting with this blog post. [338 and counting.]

My goals this week with Elena at work are to hit NANOWRIMO levels–1667+ words per day. But there are still family and friends to see and to hang out with. School rooms, bedrooms, cars and decks to clean. Food to make and store and plan for. Books to market, stories to edit, kickstarters to get started and things to mail. So, as we head into August, wish me luck. Actually, wish me hard work. That’s where the luck comes from.

Write on,

Rob