Letting others have their say but counting them for me
A lot has happened since I posted a month ago. The biggest accomplishment is that I've hit about 25,000 words in my rough draft. That's in the vicinity of 25% completion, although with all the cutting and editing I'm going to have to do, it could be considered less. One thing I'm noticing is that I'm using a lot of quotes from primary and secondary sources. A LOT. This sometimes makes me feel a little guilty because I wonder if I should count them toward my daily goal of 1,000 words. After all, all it takes is some copying and pasting of a paragraphs-long firsthand account and suddenly I'm the most efficient writer in Berkeley! A thousand words by lunchtime! But is it a cop out to take someone else's words and add them to my count? For instance, here's a paragraph I wrote about the service in some early Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. Keep in mind this is a rough draft with no editing. "Gwai-lo" in the first line is a Cantonese word for...