After running like a Swiss watch for more than two years, Movable Type suddenly headed south a couple of mornings ago. Enter a post, click the little post button, and wait. And wait. And wait. For literally hours.

No idea what the problem was. Apparently some other Movable Type sites have had problems with high server loads due to comment spam attacks. I've never had serious comment spam problems -- no, I don't know why not -- but that might have been it.

In any case, I have now upgraded to the latest version and all seems to be well.

This gives me an excuse to remind folks of the existence of ThinFilmWiki, the other frequently updated part of the site. If things seem dead here, you might look at the RecentChanges page over there. The two sections use completely different software, so it's unlikely that both will go down at once.

Upgraded to Movable Type 3.14. Testing 1 2 3

Okay, I'll go crawl under a rock now. Here I am happily adding up my thousand words a day or so and feeling like I'm making good progress. Then along comes Sheila to tell me that she wrote twenty-six. thousand. words. in one day this week.

Now, she writes fiction, which is faster than non-fiction for me, too. But still. 26,000 words. Urp.

Problems with the software this morning. This is a test...

1400 words yesterday. 6,300 for the year. Deadlines have a way of inspiring productivity, too.

1750 words over the weekend. 4,900 for the year.

In some ways, the first 10,000 or so is the hardest. After 10,000, the words start to pile up and you start to feel like you're really accomplishing something. By then you've also formed the habit of sitting down and putting words on the page. Words lead to more words.

Until you get to 100,000 or 150,000, at which point you realize how far you still have to go. By then, the momentum born of early enthusiasm has dissipated and you're just slogging along. We'll see where I am in six months.