The Week in Words - 5/12/25 - 5/25/25

All about the Pouring of Time

Output - Data

Stats Compendium

Total: 11,158 words (20 pages [4,080] + 7,078 typed)

Days of Writing: 11/14 days (.785 WrPCT) [Better than every Major League Team]

AWD: 1,014/day

Words Added to Avalanche: 1,959

Ratio: 18

Longest Day: 5/23/25 - 3,180 words (3 pages [612] + 2,568 typed)

The Still Bleepin’ Counts Award: 5/16/25 - 103 words typed

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Output - Synthesis

Last Week’s Update

It was time to tackle the first (well, 18th) note card, the one titled the Pouring of Time, the one that we’d been so very worried about.

What made me nervous was that the sequence covers the span of about eight months. As I’ve spoken of before, learning how to deftly traverse time has been a goal of mine for awhile since it’s something that I never developed prior. The immediacy of screenwriting prevented it until I delved into fiction writing, a place where I could no longer just put “Montage:” and list off the events, knowing that a team of others would fill in the gaps with their work, no, I had to figure out how to move across a chunk of time where it becomes clear that we’re near the end of the book.

The Pouring of Time is meant to be the final sequence in the storyline, until the cliffhanger of the hard-falling rain.

To help develop it, I asked: From the perspective of Levi¹, what problems did he encounter during this time? And from there, I worked out that the biggest issue remains the excessive logging of the redwoods that’s begun. He and Maribel go to the city council, only to get shut down. So he buys up all the lumber to use when building his Leviticus Institute—it’s the only sensible thing he could think to do: bring the wood back to the land where it came from.

I used the city council as the structure for the sequence, having Levi start and end this period of time there.

I’ve gotten that first scene written, and am set to start on the next in the sequence. All the practice and patience and grinding has led to a pretty streamlined process where the only real variable is time.

But at least I know how to use it.

Input - Synthesis

The repetition in The House of the Spirits got to me, and I finally had to put it down. It was all telling, and most of the details began to feel vacuous—or, more likely, I stopped giving a shit a long time ago about all the “This will happen one day” details—details which at first made me want to keep reading.

I can see that she did this to create a circular story—one that informs both retro and future—but carrying it out to this point made it a constant act of judging whether the pay off lived up to expectations. After the first act, though, I’d expected it to stop in favor of letting the story run on the energy it’s created, but she kept giving shit away, and when the event finally came to pass or bear or what have you, it was only occasionally impactful.

287 pages in, I had had enough data to feel frustrated. Unwilling to continue. Prone to scrolling if only to avoid reading.

So I put it away after reading 200 pages in the past six weeks. I got the vibe, and it’s not enticing enough to sink even more of my year into it.

As a reaction, I plucked Omensetter’s Luck off the shelf, and figured I’d give it a re-read. It was a big influence on the first draft of Avalanche, and I’m curious to know what details it dredges four years on from first being drawn to its ideas.

Until next week, dudes and dudettes.

Input - Data

Book: Omensetter’s Luck by Will.i.am H. Gass

Starting Page: 0

Ending Page: 27

Days Read: 2

Pages Read: 27

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Book: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Starting Page: 277

Ending Page: 288

Days Read: 1

Pages Read: 11

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3/14 days (.214 rPCT) [Worse than every Major League team except the Rockies]

Combined Pages Read: 38

Combined Pages Per Day: 12.6

-30-

⥁⥀⥁ Update Archives

⥁⥀⥁ Fiction

⥁⥀⥁ Appendices

⥁⥀⥁Non-Fiction

1. The young Welsh prophet who led his Socialites West to New Judah.