the Grey - Writing progress - May 2025
May 2025 update
I basically started Substack to give myself some pressure to finish this behemot of a book that has been haunting me since 25 years before I actually die (it’s not that I’m dying, though technically everybody is?). Apart from unhelpful metaphysics ramblings I think is helpful for me to report progress. Also because that gives me the chance to publish another post and annoy my subscribers? I mean I didn’t push the button, you did, so deal with it. (Please don’t unsubscribe)
So month of April 14 to May 14, what have you brought?
A few good things and a few bad ones.
Writing Statistics
Expected completion date: October 13 2027 July 26 2027
Starting from good news. This month was more productive than I was expecting. I put in 5 sessions with a total of 7.9k words in total. All sessions happened on weekends.
More good vibes for me, and a pleasant surprise: I was more productive than March with almost 2x words put in and a higher average word count per session. (New chart drop below!)
All in all the pace of progress is positive and above historical average (6 days between session vs 19). I couldn’t still move significantly the average frequency down, but long term I was able to shave ~2.5 months from my expected completion date. Now expected for July 2027 (Hooray!)
Expected completion date: July 26 2027
All in all the month registers a +3% on completion rate, with the novel now at 74% completion (please writing gods, don let me go beyond 430k)
Now time for bad news. First, session throughput. While I was more productive than March I am still below the average of the most productive sessions. When I am in the zone I easily put in 2k+ words, and the performance of the last 2 months, has been substantially lower (1.4k in March, 1.6k in April vs 2.2k historical average). Below you can see the trend. Session 56-66 are clearly among the least productive sessions.
This has decreased the general stats, with lower median, average, 75th percentile. NOT GOOD >:-(
But I guess I can recover from that, in the end consistency is better than volatility, and if I continue with this pace under the (positive) pressure that You all provide I am confident I can close the writing of the book in 2026.
Another bad news for this month is not captured by the metrics of this month is writing quality. If you follow me and my notes on Substack, you may have noticed that I was under particular stress this month due to work.
A quite dense series of deadlines and big meetings swamped my calendar, often flooding my weekends and even if I was able to put in some time in the weekends to write, I clearly perceive the quality of the work to be under average. Never fully able to enter in the story, in the heads of my characters, feeling and embody the story to convey the right emotional canvas that I would like my words to have.
Ideal? Not. Deal breaker? Neither. The goal of the first pass is to be written. Once I close the story and then I can spend more time revising, trimming, adjusting, sculpting out the unnecessary to make the final form emerge.
I end with a list of objectives for June. We’ll see next month how much I will stick to those.
Writing objectives as for June 2025
Lock in another 4-5 writing sessions
Aim to write 8k words in total
Perform 1st revision for 5-7k words
Perform final revision for next 4/6 posts
Create Post pics for next 4/6 posts
Decide on graphic style for pics to be shared in next Part, for future publication
General stats as of May 2025
66 writing sessions since Q4 2021⬆
147k total word written ⬆
Session median: 2.23k words ⬇
Session average: 2.23k words⬇
25th/75th percentile: 1.2k/2.9k words 🔁/⬇
Session standard deviation: 1.25k words ⬇
Total day since tracking start: ~1’230⬆
% of writing session of total days: ~5.3%⬆
Days between writing session: ~19 🔁
Expected sessions to complete: 46 43
Expected completion date: October 13 2027 July 26 2027
If you’re intested in more in the long term journey of my writing you can peek below. Or if you missed the last month report see the link below.
As always, thank you for the attention.
the long term Journey
It all started in 2000, I was young and naive, overwhelmed by emotions and hormones and I came up with a story of a guy that willingly gives up to his human emotions to become the arbitrer of faith. How convenient. Of course, that would only be the starting point for a lot of confusion and mischief.
The idea lingered as a few word stub full of hubris for a few years. In 2004 I started putting that on paper more consistently and over the course of ~2 years I jot down ~80k words. the vast majority of them are, obviously, garbage that needed to be rewritten completely.
After that first creativity sprint outburst I got entangled with work and the real world and my authorship dreams went in hybernation until 2010, where another book idea came to mind (the Mav, 20k words written in that period) but with that also the sense of guilt around doing nothing for the Grey. And since you can only truly write if the world around you is crumbling I got to face som e big changes in my life that pushed me to think deeply about the meaning of life and our role here in base reality.
In those ~4y I came with another ~100k words, and one of the pieces I am most proud of (Chapter XVIII, Battle of Gibraltar).
After that another long void. MBA plus new job captured in the immanence again and chained me there for 7 long years. Then at the end of 2021 I realized that I was letting my dream withering away paycheck after paycheck, project after project. My dopamine reward systems hijacked by the oiled frameworks of modern society. I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror. I would not, I could not accept to have all this beauty I have in my head to rest there, forever hidden. It seems that it has a meaning, a purpose.
I may sound arrogant, but worst case it just is only arrogant, but best case? I could miss adding to the choir of humanity something of value, so I got back to work. Put in ~160k words since then and started tracking myself systematically.
Current status is shown below. 77% complete. ~320k words written out of a forecast of ~430k. 13% of the total hase been revised and somewhat ready for Substack.
The novel has a total of 5 parts and 27 chapters. Below there is a breakdow by parts. Parts I-III are complete and vary between ~60% and ~10% revised. Part 1 requires the most work, with the 2 last chapter requiring full rewriting, but hey, It was 25 years ago, already the fact that I had the diligence to write down something was a huge achievement.
Part IV and V are the most emotionally and psichologically charged. All the themes built in Part I-III come to the final pivot to explode and collapse in one singularity. I think I have those clear in my mind. Storyboard is sketched. I just have to sit down and let them out to see where they bring me.