Winner's icons

I deserve them
Since I started writing ataround 00h00 on the first day, it was tempting to try and write exactly 50,000 and take up to 24h00 on the last day. But no, my wife likes to see me every now and then apparently.

52,420 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	52,420
ch 02	2,915		Day	29
ch 03	3,334		Projected	54,228
ch 04	2,518		Target	48,333
ch 05	3,728		Position	4,087
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917
ch 12	3,737
ch 13	2,881
ch 14	1,993
ch 15	2,455
ch 16	1,862
ch 17	2,880
ch 18	3,049

49,371 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	49,371
ch 02	2,915		Day	28
ch 03	3,334		Projected	52,898
ch 04	2,518		Target	46,667
ch 05	3,728		Position	2,704
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917
ch 12	3,737
ch 13	2,881
ch 14	1,993
ch 15	2,455
ch 16	1,862
ch 17	2,880

46,286 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	46,286
ch 02	2,915		Day	27
ch 03	3,334		Projected	51,429
ch 04	2,518		Target	45,000
ch 05	3,728		Position	1,286
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917
ch 12	3,737
ch 13	2,881
ch 14	1,993
ch 15	2,455
ch 16	1,657

43,548 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	43,548
ch 02	2,915		Day	26
ch 03	3,334		Projected	50,248
ch 04	2,518		Target	43,333
ch 05	3,728		Position	215
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917
ch 12	3,737
ch 13	2,881
ch 14	1,993
ch 15	1,374

42,174 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	42,174
ch 02	2,915		Day	26
ch 03	3,334		Projected	48,662
ch 04	2,518		Target	43,333
ch 05	3,728		Position	-1,159
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917
ch 12	3,737
ch 13	2,881
ch 14	1,993

Home stretch. Sprint finish.

Yeah

40,181 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	40,181
ch 02	2,915		Day	25
ch 03	3,334		Projected	48,217
ch 04	2,518		Target	41,667
ch 05	3,728		Position	-1,486
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917
ch 12	3,737
ch 13	2,881

37,300 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	37,300
ch 02	2,915		Day	25
ch 03	3,334		Projected	44,760
ch 04	2,518		Target	41,667
ch 05	3,728		Position	-4,367
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917
ch 12	3,737

33,563 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	33,563
ch 02	2,915		Day	24
ch 03	3,334		Projected	41,954
ch 04	2,518		Target	40,000
ch 05	3,728		Position	-6,437
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495
ch 11	3,917

29,646 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	29,646
ch 02	2,915		Day	24
ch 03	3,334		Projected	37,058
ch 04	2,518		Target	40,000
ch 05	3,728		Position	-10,354
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387
ch 10	3,495

Half way...

Half way is nothing to be proud of at this stage. I have just had to miss a couple of days due to sickness though. If I can have a great weekend, it's still on the cards.

26,151 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	26,151
ch 02	2,915		Day	22
ch 03	3,334		Projected	35,660
ch 04	2,518		Target	36,667
ch 05	3,728		Position	-10,516
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752
ch 09	3,387

22,764 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	22,764
ch 02	2,915		Day	19
ch 03	3,334		Projected	35,943
ch 04	2,518		Target	31,667
ch 05	3,728		Position	-8,903
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893
ch 08	1,752

21,012 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	21,012
ch 02	2,915		Day	18
ch 03	3,334		Projected	35,020
ch 04	2,518		Target	30,000
ch 05	3,728		Position	-8,988
ch 06	3,207
ch 07	2,893

SPOILER notes

The Spike Garden notes
Characters
Water garden aunt
Names: Stare, Look, Aura, Tarot, Sight, Seer, Mist
Contemplative (originally Deep and romantic)
Interested in the occult
Told Echo to imagine herself with the man she wants whilst in “private ecstasy” This is when Echo bit into her mirror. WG aunt told her this, knowing it to be false.
A liar
Her death is first and a genuine accident. Narr is a witness and decides not to help her.
?She falls off her secret roof during an experiment to catch lightning. Narr had to help her as punishment.
Banned from her garden for switching an animal to be sacrificed. Mist had acquired a stray moggie but Narr substitutes a pet of one of the other aunts.
Loses a man through not being direct
Spring garden aunt
Aunt Blush
What happens in other seasons
Youth obsessed
Adopted faddish ways of talking
Hated her birthdays. Received presents but they were not called birthday presents
Portrait is of her as an old woman
Suffocated by a corset. This is the last death and the one most like a murder. Narr. Ties her up and gags her with a powder puff before tightening her corset to the point where she cannot breathe. He tightens it a little more with each cough.
?Kills herself when she starts to get wrinkles
?Her life stopped when she stopped being young (because she killed herself or let herself waste away)
Narrator was excluded for telling a man Blush's real age
Fruit garden aunt
Aunt Carbon
Wants to be a mother so that she can copy herself
Only wants daughters
Eats a lot
plays strip brag
But only wants sex for reproduction
MC sees evidence that her lover has an STD and does not pass it on. ?She asked him to check her lover's penis's apearance. he does so but then does not tell her what he sees.
Green garden aunt
Aunt Halo
Eternality and consistency
Liked exercise and used to go running in the gardens
Ate in moderation
Made long-term investments
Few new clothes
Obsessed by sleep
Died by sleeping draught overdose. Narr kept waking her, secretly, so that she took stronger and stronger doses.
Rose garden aunt
Aunt Echo
Obsessed by her own beauty
dies biting a mirror in ecstasy (narr. may have cracked the mirror first)
Had many nudes painted of herself, by painters that she was trying to ensnare
MC’s mother
Names: Stiletto, Mantrap
?died in childbirth
?weakened by childbirth
All the grace of a spider on the underside of a labourer's boot. A broken umbrella.
Her orifices are traps
Narrator
His artist
Narrative
Part one: Now
7 chapters
- starting a relationship
- with a painter who has been commissioned to do portraits of the gardens
- some of her sentences are like a full moon, others like a partial moon
- each portrait brings in an element of the aunt’s personality, like the mirror
- each portrait tells us a bit about the artist
- finally, he plays in the spike garden. Could be chasing his artist. Her name might be the same as his mother's.
- The aunts all hate each other but they hated his mother more.
- “Owning a penis makes you a rapist. Owning the spike garden makes you a madman”

Water
Spring
Fruit
Green
Rose
Mist
Blush
Carbon
Halo
Echo
6
5
7
4
3
Halo
Mist
Echo
Carbon
Blush
Breakfast
Fortune telling
Leaving a funeral
Picnic
Dressing for a ball
Sacrifice switch
Revealing her age
Giving a prophylactic to a man
?Tripped when running
Pushing her into pond
death 1
death 5
death 2


Fell
Corseted
STD
Overdose
Biting mirror

Part two: Childhood
5 chapters
- when I had more gardens, aunts and mothers (or but not mothers because his mother died when he was born or just after)
- descriptions of gardens themselves
- he is barred from the gardens, one by one, for doing various things in each one
- like pushing the rose garden aunt into the water (because the world in the mirror could not be entered because the mirror is hard) enough water to break your fall, but not enough to drown you, like a good depth of shame
Part three: Adulthood
5 chapters
- each aunt dies
- Narrator murders them with weapons that he has found harmful to himself
Part four: Before birth
? chapters
- told by his father
- how his mother met his father
she competed with and defeated all his aunts to gain the attention of his father
- Narr. father was killed by the defeated aunts
Bits
“An unstoned sinner”
“We do not sleep alone. When one is alone one cannot come to harm.”
“When I read the words Prison Creater I was in love.”

18,119 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	18,119
ch 02	2,915		Day	16
ch 03	3,334		Projected	33,973
ch 04	2,518		Target	26,667
ch 05	3,728		Position	-8,548
ch 06	3,207

15,489 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	15,489
ch 02	2,915		Day	15
ch 03	3,334		Projected	30,978
ch 04	2,518		Target	25,000
ch 05	3,728		Position	-9,511
ch 06	577

All free software novel

Yup, as of today The Spike Garden is being written on free software
I am running OpenOffice.org Writer, which came with Debian linux
The word count is done in OpenOffice.org calc
This post was amde using Epiphany web browser

Up until now I had been saving in MS Word format but my hard disk had a hardware crash so I replaced it with linux. I found that the OpenOffice.org Writer was unreliable in updating its word counts so I've switched to its own ODT format.

13,953 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	13,953
ch 02	2,915		Day	14
ch 03	3,334		Projected	29,899
ch 04	2,518		Target	23,333
ch 05	2,769		Position	-9,380

12,275 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	12,275
ch 02	2,915		Day	13
ch 03	3,067		Projected	28,327
ch 04	2,518		Target	21,667
ch 05	1,358		Position	-9,392

SPOILER notes

The Spike Garden notes
Or: a pointed person and the people impaled
Water garden aunt
Names: Stare, Look, Aura, Tarot, Sight, Seer
Contemplative (originally Deep and romantic)
Interested in the occult
Told Echo to imagine herself with the man she wants whilst in “private ecstasy” This is when Echo bit into her mirror. WG aunt told her this, knowing it to be false.
Spring garden aunt
Aunt Blush
What happens in other seasons
Youth obsessed
Adopted faddish ways of talking
Hated her birthdays. Received presents but they were not called birthday presents
Portrait is of her as an old woman
?Kills herself when she starts to get wrinkles
?suffocated by a corset
Narrator was excluded for telling a man Blush's real age
Fruit garden aunt
Aunt Carbon
Wants to be a mother so that she can copy herself
Only wants daughters
Eats a lot
“The fruit does not resemble the tree”
Green garden aunt
Aunt Halo
Eternality and consistency
Liked exercise and used to go running in the gardens
Ate in moderation
Made long-term investments
Few new clothes
Obsessed by sleep
Died by sleeping draught overdose
Rose garden aunt
Aunt Echo
Obsessed by her own beauty
dies biting a mirror in ecstasy (narr. may have cracked the mirror first)
Had many nudes painted of herself, by painters that she was trying to ensnare
MC’s mother
Names: Stiletto, Mantrap
?died in childbirth
?weakened by childbirth

parts
1. now
- starting a relationship
- with a painter who has been commissioned to do portraits of the gardens
- some of her sentences are like a full moon, others like a partial moon
- each portrait brings in an element of the aunt’s personality, like the mirror
- each portrait tells us a bit about the artist
- finally, he plays in the spike garden. Could be chasing his artist. Her name might be the same as his mother's.
- The aunts all hate each other but they hated his mother more.
- “Owning a penis makes you a rapist. Owning the spike garden makes you a madman”
2. childhood
- when I had more gardens, aunts and mothers (or but not mothers because his mother died when he was born or just after)
- he is barred from the gardens, one by one, for doing various things in each one
- like pushing the rose garden aunt into the water (because the world in the mirror could not be entered because the mirror is hard) enough water to break your fall, but not enough to drown you, like a good depth of shame
3. adulthood
- each aunt dies
- Narrator murders them with weapons that he has found harmful to himself
4. before birth
- told by his father
- how his mother met his father
she competed with and defeated all his aunts to gain the attention of his father
- Narr. father was killed by the defeated aunts

Bits
“An unstoned sinner”

10,317 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	10,317
ch 02	2,915		Day	12
ch 03	3,067		Projected	25,793
ch 04	1,918		Target	20,000
			Position	-9,683

9,029 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	9,029
ch 02	2,915		Day	11
ch 03	3,067		Projected	24,625
ch 04	630		Target	18,333
			Position	-9,304

8,399 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	8,399
ch 02	2,915		Day	11
ch 03	3,067		Projected	22,906
			Target	18,333
			Position	-9,934

6,379 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	6,379
ch 02	2,915		Day	11
ch 03	1,047		Projected	17,397
			Target	18,333
			Position	-11,954

5,332 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	5,332
ch 02	2,915		Day	10
			Projected	15,996
			Target	16,667
			Position	-11,335

4,522 words

ch 01	2,417		Total	4,522
ch 02	2,105		Day	10
			Projected	13,566
			Target	16,667
			Position	-12,145