World Record Attempt - checking where I am

DAY FORTY-EIGHT: Wednesday 17th February 2021:

First things first then I want to make today’s page of Dave’s Diary a bit different.

I didn’t sign off on yesterday’s page did I !  So let’s do it now:

Tuesday 16th February 2021:

Catch you again tomorrow

Dave

Well today is tomorrow, or should that be yesterday ?  Time for SMILE OF THE DAY:  If you see someone falling behind walk beside them. If you see someone being ignored, find a way to include them.


Always remind people of their worth. One small act could mean the world to them.

I write this diary to be included in the time capsule I am building, building to seal on 31st December 2021 then to be opened on 1st January 2121. I also pop the page onto Google Blogger but since Google screwed it up only a tiny handful of people check it out each day. I do hope that today will be different. I want to take stock of where I am with my writing challenge and seek some support/ encouragement.

I have set myself the challenge to write 1,000,000 words across the year and to publish them in a minimum of 24 e-book stories on Amazon. This will set a new world record breaking that set by Barbra Cartland when she published 23 books in a single year. No Amazon and e-books back then of course !

Yesterday I wrote 5,425 words bringing my total so far since 1st January to 344,032. I am easily going to pass the one million word mark and am looking towards two million. Hitting half a million words some time next month will be a landmark at which point I will engage with the media and even try to start selling some books. (The

money of course will go into our SMILE project.)

Since 1st January these works have been published on Amazon:

The Retro Eighties

L’escargot Albert

Aliens In Time

In Search Of The Leons

Jukebox Jury

Dave’s Diary

Milton Keynes A Disco For A New City

By The Pricking Of My Thumbs

Behind The Noose Or Not

The Secret Diary Of An Old Man Aged Thirteen And Three Quarters

10 books.

I have also written Poet’s Corner but Amazon’s automated system keeps screwing up and can not recognise more than eight poets whose work is in the public domain !  Long story but never mind.

The book contains 47,714 words and features 22 poets. I am thinking to add in two more poets and then publish the work in three volumes so negotiating Amazon’s flaws. However, I may make in 26 poets and four volumes each of 25,000 words making 1000,000 words. I will dabble with this today.

Currently I am writing A STAIRCASE OF WORDS which leads the reader through the various books I read as a child and as a teenager, then explains how I got into writing before leading the reader to become themselves an amazon author.

Today I am going to pause while I ask my Mum (92 years of age) and my Dad (95 years of age) to refresh my mind from when I was a little kiddie-kid.

Each day I am trying to write a quiz sheet for WHO NEEDS A PUB TO HAVE A QUIZ which will be published on 1st April. These qui z sheets go out with SMILES every week to Flowers Care Home, Dreamsai’s 100 food boxes for the vulnerable and to oud hospital of the week.


I am today going to start a new work, a discussion and debate work where my tongue will be firmly in my cheeks as I present THIS HOUSE BELIEVES.

This house believes that the BBC should be closed

This house believes that politics should be abolished from democracy

This house believes that the death penalty should be reintroduced for drug dealing

This house believes that smart phones should be made illegal

This house believes that Microsoft and Google should be prosecuted for breaches of personal privacy

This house believes that diplomatic relations should be broken off with all members of the European Union

This house believes that American spelling should be banned from all English

This house believes that no product can be sold unless all of its packaging can be recycled

This house believes that the current plastic notes should be torn up and predecimal coinage be the norm

This house believes that all schools must be returned to local authority management

This house believes that all on-line advertising should be reformed and strongly policed

This house believes that university tuition fees should be abolished

This house believes that the pop music industry needs to be revived

This house believes that there should be 500% VAT charged on all meat products

A STAIRCASE OF WORDS and THIS HOUSE BELIEVES together with the February edition of DAVE’S DIARY will be published by the end of the month bringing the total number of books in the year so far to 13.

I need to publish POET’S CORNER in three or four volumes on the same day. It would be good if this could be achieved by the end of February but it may slip into March.

I have three Victorian coins: A silver half crown dating from the very early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, a one shilling coin from 1887 and a penny from 1899. I plan to use the three in a story IF ONLY WE COULD SPEAK.

My two music books designed to be read on a smart phone with the ready diverting to YouTube to listen to the music have proved popular.  I want to do something similar with classical music under the title IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE PLAY ON. That’s a quote from Shakespeare you know.

One fear I had with this writing project was that this laptop would die and bring failure to the project. Not so !  I now have a back up laptop so Guinness Book Of Records watch out, I am coming.

Phew, got that lot off my chest. Let’s now turn to my friends at Wikipedia and find out what was happening ON THIS DAY.

17th February 1959: Vanguard Two, the first weather satellite is launched to measure cloud cover distribution.

17th February 1974: Robert K Preeston, a disgruntled US Army private buzzes the White House in a stolen helicopter. GOOD FOR HIM !

17th February 2008: Kosovo declares independence from Serbia.

Anyone I know born on this day ?

17th February 1951: Rashid Minhas, Pakistani soldier and pilot born.  WHO OR WHAT THE HECK IS HE ?

17th February 1955: Mo Yan, Chinese author born. SORRY I DO NOT READ CHINESE – IT’S THE LAST  LANGUAGE I HAVE ANY INTEREST IN.


17th February 1978: Rory Kinnear born. Now I do know who this guy is.

17th February 1991: Ed Sheeran The Ginger Ninger was born.

On this day yesterday another 10,625 new china virus cases in Britain and a further 799 deaths. Locally 51 more cases and 1 death. I try every day to send love and condolences to the families, to applaud those who cared for them. Will our monarch ever wake up and see it to be here responsibility to send letters of condolence to the bereaved ?

In sadness I will now sign off.

Speak again  tomorrow

Dave

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MORE LEGENDS

Image
THERE ARE MORE LEGENDS PER SQUARE MILE IN MILTON KEYNES THAN CAN BE FOUND IN ANY OTHER TOWN< CITY OR VILLAGE IN BRITAIN   ·        Signs and roundabouts – Someone once joked that Milton Keynes was a place of signs and wonders. There were signs pointing everywhere and everyone wondered where they were actually pointing to.   Built on a unique grid road system the H roads are those which run Horizontally across the city, broadly West to East. The V roads run North and South up and down the plan. The H roads are all WAYS – Portway while the V roads are Streets – Fulmer Street and so on. Where each V road intersected with an H road there was a roundabout, at one time with a smile it was said that there were three hundred and sixty-five roundabouts, one for each day of the year. I think, somehow, that is just a legend with the tiniest possible grain of truth. Approaching a roundabout the first set of signs told the driver the local/immediate d...
Read more

Time to be positive

Image
  DAY SIX:   Wednesday 6 th January 2021: On this scale how are you feeling right now about China Virus ? I’M OK WITH IT ALL – SCARED - FRIGHTENED – TERRIFIED – END OF THE WORLD IS COMING I am somewhere between scared and frightened. Did you see last night’s briefing ? Did you see how Prime Minister Boris Johnson waffled and burbled his way through the questions ? No need for a scale, simply do you trust the government to take us successfully through this china virus pandemic ?   The answer I am sure is a universal NO ! Would the likes of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher have performed the way Boris Johnson is ? When they speak on TV I am usually happy and reassured by what the scientists say but last night I got the feeling they did not fully understand what they were saying and did not have complete confidence in themselves. I am seventy years old, still a teenager at heart but I no longer have the physical fitness I once had. If I need minor ...
Read more

Milton Keynes - WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK AND ROLL

Image
WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK AND ROLL    So Starship claimed for San Francisco but take a moment and see just how much Milton Keynes is built on Rock and Roll – We BUILT THIS NEW CITY ON ROCK AND ROLL. Go to Los Angeles, to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and there you will find a star dedicated to a Milton Keynes giant of Rock and Roll ! Jim Marshall, The Lord of Loud was an Mkeyneyan who founded Marshall Amplification and told the world’s pop musicians to turn the volume up to eleven. All of Marshall’s world famous amplifiers do indeed have volume knobs rotating up to number eleven. Without Jim Marshall of Bletchley, Milton Keynes so many pop groups of international fame would not have achieved all they did. I met Jim Marshall a number of times, he was a generous man when it came to supporting music and schools. His attitude was: The answer is YES, how much do you need ? What do Freddie Mercury, David Bowie and Michael Jackson all have in common ?   They all played T...
Read more