Word count update: 70,000-plus! (we think)

We've passed page 300 in the book and have once again outpaced the counting of the words. Using the last words-per-page average that we calculated (249 words per page) gives an estimate of around 75,000 words. Just to be conservative for now, it's safe to say that we've blown by 70,000 words.

Word count update

51,700.

Word count update

49,700.

Word count update

47,000.

Big winner

We just received this great picture of Andrew Lashinsky, the lucky lad who won the huge wooden pencil that was one of the decorations in the Library during the book copying.

Andrew is one-third of a set of triplets, so you know that at least two members of his household may be envious of his good fortune!

Definitely an above average pencil

We passed 45,000 words--the number mentioned in the Discover magazine article as average for a pencil--at about 8:20 on May 18. Ethan Eldred was writing at the time.

Here's a picture of the word: hot. It's circled but still hard to see.



And here's a picture of the pencil after passing 45,000 words. What a champ!

The counting has caught up with the writing!

Words written so far: 41,518
The page we've reached in the book: 170
Actual number of pages from which we've copied, starting with the title page: 167
Average words per page: 249
Length of pencil remaining: 3.125"
Pages of filler paper used: 221
The most recent sentence written: It was a happy cemetery.

Finally ... the big reason that the number of words per page keeps dropping (pointed out by a friend ... Thanks, Carl!): There's more dialogue than in the earlier pages, and dialogue takes up more room on a page, because of all the paragraph breaks.

End of Sunday update

I wish this were moving faster, but other areas of life keep intruding, and word-counting and word-copying are both slow endeavors. : )

I can report that we've copied up through the middle of page 168 in the edition that we're using, and that we still have over 3 inches of pencil to write with.

And we've counted up through the bottom of page 147. The total of counted words stands at 36,700. The projected total of written words stands at 41,745.

The average count of words per page keeps declining. That must be because Scout's vocabulary includes more long words as she ages somewhat through the book. Also, the farther you go, the more long legal terms there are!

Word-counting update

Our estimate of words written keeps changing as we keep writing and counting. Through 65 pages of text in our edition, we have counted 17,600 words for an average of about 257 words per page. We have copied the text through page 155, so if the average word count holds steady, we've already written 39,823 words. We still have a lot of pencil left and expect to complete the copying this weekend.

A final list of our writers!

Thanks to all!

1. Jeffrey Ketner
2. Shirley Bowser
   
3. Crystal Crissman
4. Rev. Marlys Hershberger
5. Anna Sylvester
6. Donna Riggen
7. Suzanne Sylvester
8. Pamela Johnson
9. Janice Albright
10. Connie Letscher
11. John Letscher
12. Janet Eldred
13. Ethan Eldred
14. Don Ruggery, Jr.,
15. Julie Ansley
16. Mark Michrina
17. Carl DeCaspers
    
18. Joyce Eger
19. Mary Ann Keagy
20. Ann Blough
    
21. Diane Witmeyer
22. Michelle Ewing
23. Marissa Ewing
24. Ken Sheppard
25. Keith Eldred
26. Emmett Eldred
    

The copying continues

Here we see Emmett Eldred, Keith's son, wielding the Biconderoga at Keith's kitchen table, the new site for copying. The pencil endures! As of our last report, we had copied through page 132 or our edition. Now we've copied through page 205.

We've also started a careful count of the words in the book. Through 23 pages of our edition, the word count is 6600, or about 287 per page. If that rate holds steady, we've already written out nearly 59,000 words--well beyond the 45,000 stated in Discovery magazine!

A report after 32 hours into the effort

We were fortunate to have an excellent pencil sharpener at hand in the Library. We heartily recommend the Royal P40. The best feature is the little light labeled "SHARPENED." As soon as we saw that light flicker, our pencil was declared SHARPENED and thrust back into action.

As reflected in the chart below, we measured the pencil before each sharpening, and sometimes after. We used a borrowed Vernier caliper that measures to one-thousandth of an inch, though we general measured only to a tenth or a hundredth of an inch. Eventually, we realized that sharpening often didn't measurably decrease the length but only tapered the wood and the lead. The reduction in length comes as the lead itself wears away. We've sharpened the pencil 32 times in 32 hours, exactly once per hour--not by design; it just worked out that way.

Click here to see the raw data. Note the sudden drop in overall length of the pencil toward the end, before the decreases become regular once again. That's when the ferrule and eraser came off!

As of this posting, the latest measurement is 3.26 inches. The pencil started out at 6.65 inches minus the ferrule (That measurement actually comes from an identical pencil with the ferrule removed), so the total decrease is just about 3.4 inches. Over 32 hours, that averages out to a decrease of .11 inches per hour. So a 6.65-inch pencil would take 60.5 hours to wear away. That means we're only a little over half-way done!

Now, another factor is the changing ergonomic situation. That's a fancy way of saying that it's harder to write with a pencil stub. On the other hand, there are two simple answers to that:

ANSWER 1: Switch to a second pencil
Hang on, this is not a cop-out. Think about it. We simply need to wear away 3.26 more inches of lead. If we do it in a second, easier-to-handle pencil, that's still the equivalent of using up the original pencil.

ANSWER 2: The Bi-Conderoga
Stub + Ferrule + A pencil with the ferrule removed + Stabilizing Tape = A more manageable pencil.


We couldn't expect to wear away the whole length, because we need to have something to hang onto to insert the pencil into Royal P40! We're still figuring out how much we more we could wear away, but at most it would be 2 inches. Our current estimate of our total words written, having worn away 3.4 inches of pencil, is 29,000 words. So wearing away two more inches would give us 17,000 words, lifting our total OVER the target of 45,000 words.

To be continued ... We're going to sleep on all this and form our strategy tomorrow.

What fuels Mockingbird writers besides love of literature?

FOOD!

Samples from the 163 pages SO FAR

After 30 hours of continuous writing, the pencil measures in at 3.45 inches. There's lots of narrative left in that baby yet!

The pencil just went topless!

Check it out: the metal band and eraser separated from the pencil while Ken was starting a fresh page. It was bound to happen after more than 29 hours of continuous use.

Now, we're operating with a golf pencil!

By the way, the proper name for the metal band is ferrule.

Thanks to all our writers! (Part 4)

How low can you go?

This low!

Mark Michrina, writing in the Saturday 9:00 am slot, really got the lead out! He finally reached a point where he simply could not leave any more marks!

Thanks to all our writers! (Part 3)

Thanks to all of our writers! (Part 2)

Thanks to all of our writers! (Part 1)

N

Look! The book!

Here's the edition of To Kill a Mockingbird that we'll be copying from. We chose large print to make it easier to read and to keep your place. And larger print makes it APPEAR that there are fewer words waiting to be copied.

Note the word marked in pencil. We're going through and circling every hundredth word to establish milestones for progress!