Page 200 - Word Count 37,931 (wp) 47,000 (pr)

Ah, what a wonderful thing. I sat down this evening to go over the most recent chapter and wound up pumping out about 2000 words. That's what it was like with the last novel, and it's getting to be that way again, with the work taking on a life of its own. I'm really tired tonight (hard couple of days at work) and really didn't intend on writing anything, but it turned out I didn't have any say in the matter.

It was also cool in that I just hit page 200 of the manuscript. In fact, I just finished typing and page 200 only contains one solitary line. It's a line of dialogue. My protagonist says it. He's sitting on the edge of a bathtub in a grimy bathroom with his gun to another man's head.

He says: "When you close your eyes at night, do they scream?"

Page 123

A few weeks back, Sex Scenes at Starbucks posted an interesting exercise on her blog. The idea is to go to page 123 of your work in progress, go to the fifth line, and take an excerpt from that paragraph. At the time I was at page twenty-something, so did it with page 23. Now I've reached page 123 I'm having another go. Here it is (complete with my customary foul language):

Campbell grinned as Toner dragged him out to the street.

"What the fuck are you at?" asked Toner, his watery eyes wide, his mouth gaping under his thick moustache.

"He was asking for it," said Campbell.

Toner straightened his black tie. "Jesus Christ, Davy! Eddie Coyle's an arsehole, everyone knows that, but you don't beat the shit out of him in front of his mates if you're looking to make friends around here."

Campbell pointed to the Jaguar at the kerb. "That yours?"

"Aye," said Toner, seeming to grow a full inch taller.

Campbell picked glass from his palm. "Well, quit yapping and take me to McGinty."

What I'm particularly pleased with is that I've written almost 100 pages just a few weeks. :)