Things have been slow here in Poultney-town, but with the snow melting, the mud squishing, and the sun getting more face-time than an Asian paraplegic at a college open house, the bustling months of summer are right around the corner.

Most of my days and nights are still spent in this godforsaken home-office, and while I love working from home, it can sometimes seem a little cloistering. You’d think the end of the semester (which is in four weeks) would mean I could get out of the house a little more, but the first full draft of my creative thesis is due at the end of June, so the last weeks of spring and the first weeks of summer aren’t going to be much different than these past six months of winter…except for maybe I’ll have the window open.

Once the deadline passes and I hand in the first full draft of the thesis, you’d think, “Okay, now he can get out of the office,” but the truth is that I’ll only have about eighteen weeks to turn my thesis into a real, live novel, one that the school will accept as satisfying my gradution requirement, so…even when summer is in full bloom, most of my days will still be spent at this friggin’ computer.

I’m not complaining. It’s just with today being such a beautiful day, I’m trying to orient my thoughts away from “Man! I can’t wait for summer!” to “Who gives a shit about summer? Get writing!”

My fourth packet is due on Friday. This is my “Teaching Practicum” packet, which means its the culmination of my teaching experience this semester. I know I said way back when that I’d be updating you every week as to how my class is going, but with the way I structured the class, the updates would have been little more than: “I walked into the class, passed back my comments on their drafts, gave out the day’s assignment, and told them to get writing. Then I sat there for forty-five minutes while they wrote.”

In short–the main thing I learned about teaching a writing class this semester is how not to do it.

And now I have to write a fifteen-page essay about it. Good thing I can be such a verbose motherfucker.

But here’s the thing. Here’s why I’m excited. Once this teaching packet is out the door, I ain’t got nothing left to do but complete my creative thesis (well, I still have seven annotations, but they don’t count). In my first semester, I had to worry about two short, critical papers. In my second semester, I had to worry about a long, critical paper. And this semester, I had to worry about the teaching practicum.

But next semester ain’t nothing but fiction. Talk about living the dream.

As far as my actual progress goes, March was not a very good month, writing wise. Check this shit out:

Half the friggin’ word count as February! Half! God damn it!

One thing I started doing in March was clocking in and clocking out on my writing time. I wanted to see not only how many days I was writing per month, but also how many hours. I also wanted to see the average length of my writing sessions, the average word count per session, and the average words per hour. I already had most of the information, but I just needed to add my clock in and clock out times to get the formulas right.

So, keeping in mind that March was, overall, a bad month of writing, here are the stats:

• Words Written: 10,095
• Avg. Words per Session: 631 (in February, it was 1,600)
• Avg. Happiness: 2.9 (on a 5.0 scale)
• Total Hours of Writing: 39.92
• Avg. Hours per Session: 2.49
• Avg. Words per Hour: 253

If you ask me, a month of writing like that does not a successful novelist make.

And because I know you care, here’s the breakdown of what I was doing on those days I wasn’t writing:

• Sat., March 1: Spent the day with Dawn
• Mon, March 3: Don’t remember
• Fri, March 7: Hung with Dawn
• Sat, March 8: Supposed to go to N.H. to see a play, but ended up getting “frozen rained in,” and since I wasn’t planning on writing anyway, I didn’t.
• Mon, March 10: Not writing, but I printed and proofread the first 28 pages of chapter six
• Fri, March 14: Went to N.H. to see a play
• Wed, March 19: Took a break after sending packet #3
• Thu, March 20: Watched a movie with Dawn, Mark, and Anne
• Fri, March 21: Watched No Country for Old Men (amazing movie!)
• Sat, March 22: Watched American Gangster (terrible movie!)
• Mon, March 24: Don’t remember
• Tue, March 25: Had a terrible back ache that had me contemplating going to the E.R., but Advil and Icy Hot did their job
• Fri, March 28: Went to a Dark and Stormy party at Rachel and J.T.s’
• Sat, March 29: Watched the Sopranos with Dawn
• Sun, March 30: Watched the Wire with Dawn

See, what I gotta do this summer is, on those days when I’m not writing, do something more rewarding than watch movies. That’s what I gotta do this summer. That and…not not write.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with my writing right now. The good news is that April is shaping up a little better. Sure, we’re only seven days into it, but I already have 4,995 words written and 14.25 hours of writing time clocked, which gives me like 350 words per hour. If I can keep that pace, I’m on track to write about 20,000 words this month. I doubt I’ll be able to do it, because in a week’s time, we’re gonna have like half-a-dozen guests in town (college reunion!) and that’ll be some significant not-writing time. But hey, even if I do no writing that week, I’m still on track to reach about 15,000 words this month.

And there it is, I guess. A monthly goal. 15,000 words.

Ask me on May 1, and we’ll see if I made it.