It’s happening.

My lovely wife has allowed me to bunk in a hotel for the next four days while I race to stay ahead of a deadline. I’m shacking up in San Jose’s Hotel Valencia, which is, incidentally, about 20 miles south of my house. That begs the question, what’s wrong with me? Simple answer. I need isolation. Doesn’t matter if it’s a barren cabin in Alaska, or my neighbor’s extra room, just so long as no people barge in to say hi.

Day 1 results: 4,000-plus words written.

This puts Sophistication at 81,000 words and counting. If I can continue the momentum–and I have almost no confidence in my ability to do that–I should be able to cross 100,000 words in the next five days. I’m only here for four, though, which means I’m more likely to achieve around 15,000 words, which will put me in the 95,000 range.

What’s all this mean? Almost nothing. You can’t judge a book by its word count, just as I can’t rely upon one to determine if my story will be fully told. I think 100,000 words will be sufficient. I might finish it in 95,000. I might need 115,000. By all the gods, I hope it doesn’t take me 200,000, or my hotel bills will be fiscally irresponsible.

In other highly unrelated news, Hotel Valencia doesn’t allow you to bring alcohol into your room–it prefers (singular, cuz American) that you buy it at roughly $80 per fluid ounce (note: Yelp will hear about this.) I smuggled Booker’s into my place, anyway, and so far it seems like the right choice. Also, many of today’s words have been written to Kendrick Lamar’s latest, which has no bearing on any points I might have made or intend to make. It’s just a detail for your consideration.

Will update throughout the next four days with musings that lean to happy and excited or depressed and defeated. Still a little too early to tell.