What’s up with the banner

A new effort to motivate my favorite procrastinator, the one I talk with in the mirror every morning:

I have replaced my portrait, the one with the mysterious smile, with a blog banner (above) that features the warrior girl who appears on the cover of my near-legendary unfinished novel Jeep Thompson and The Lost Prince of Venus. The project has been in development for so long that I almost guarantee its release to the world will be anticlimactic, whenever it comes.

The purpose of this temporary banner is to remind me, every time I service the blog (in other words, every day), that I need to write some Jeep words today. Every day I manage to write blog words and day-job words, but I let too much time lapse between Jeep words. This is me declaring I’m going to get serious again about the Jeep words.

It’s not unlike NaNoWriMo, except I’m not even shooting for 50,000 words and it shouldn’t take 30 days before you see my smiling face again. My goal is to produce a novel of about 40,000 words, barely more than a novella, although it is the first installment of a planned trilogy that is also — well, let’s just say for now that it’s the first installment of a planned trilogy. Part of the fun will be unveiling what else it is.

If the “daily reminder banner” works, I will include this trick in the forthcoming companion book How to Beat Procrastination in Thirty Years. If it doesn’t work, I will include this trick in the chapter on failed experiments.

I’m not going to mention this again. The only clues I intend to give regarding progress are that when the novel is finished, I will replace the blog banner as noted above, without fanfare, and as I go along I will conclude each blog post with the strange numbers you see below. This means that Saturday I banged out 845 new Jeep words to bring the project to approximately 23,676 words — and remember the goal is a 40,000-word novel.

And here’s another clue for you all: That’s not a sword draped over her shoulder. It’s a bongrik, and as the story progresses, Jeep Thompson will become a master of that elegant weapon. (That was my little attempt to generate some anticipation for the finished piece. How am I doing?)

845/23,676