Whenever I talk about the long walk, I get asked plenty of questions. Will I walk every day?  How far and how long will I walk each day?  Will I continue to work?  If so, how?  Am I going to write What We’ve Got while I’m on the road or am I planning to finish it before I leave/put it on hold until I return?

These are all good questions, and since I’m not even half the man that is “the Man” from Cormac McCarthy’s brilliant novel (I have this sinking feeling that old Viggo is about to destroy said novel in celuloid, by the way), setting about to answering these questions is probably a decent idea.

First: No, I will not walk every day.  I plan to walk in two-day intervals, with the third day being what I’m told longwalkers call “Zero Day.”  I assume they call it this because zero miles are walked on this day.  The entire journey will hopefully take 90 days or so, with 60 of those days being actual walking.

My goal is to walk an average of 20 miles per day.  I imagine that in Florida, where the land is flat, I’ll average more miles per day, while in West Virginia, where the land is ungodly hilly, I’ll average far fewer.  Research suggests that the average man walks approximately 3 miles per hour.  Since I have legs like Gisele, I imagine I might walk faster – except that I’ll be carrying a pack and walking with a dog that lacks any semblance of attention span, so let’s just bring it back down to 3mph.  That means that, to reach my goal, I’ll have to commit to seven hours of proper walking, with 90 minutes or so factored in for breaks.

Will I work?  Unless money becomes irrelevant between now and April, yes, I will continue to work – only at a greatly reduced capacity.  Presently, I ghostwrite for eight hours per day. With timewasters like SI.com, CNN.com, and Facebook.com sprinkled in here and there, it probably only comes down to four hours of actual writing.  Come April, I hope to reduce that hour-number to a much more concentrated two.  Yes, I will be making less money by doing that – and yes, it will be more difficult to give my clients the daily submissions they often require – but with the sporadic contact and work-time that I anticipate, that’ll be a necessary evil.

The walk itself was originally conceived as research for What We’ve Got, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t wait to write the walking portions of the manuscript until I’ve actually embarked on the walking, and I think I’d be cheating the project if I put it on hold until I returned (plus, the longer I put it on the shelf, the less likely it is that I’ll actually see it through to the end).  In summary, I plan on writing for the book while I’m out.  I hope to write for myself for about two hours per walking day and write for my clients for about the same.

Assuming all goes according to plan, my schedule will look something like this:

6:00(ish) – Rise with the sun
6:05 – Take Adama out for pooping; bury or otherwise dispose of said poop
6:10 – Feed Adama
6:15 – Have snack
6:30 – Ghostwrite
8:30 – Eat breakfast
8:45 – Deconstruct camp

9:00 – Get to walkin’
10:30 – Break for water/snack
10:45 – Get to walkin’

12:00 – Lunch

12:45 – Get to walkin’
2:00 – Break for water/snack
2:15 – Get to walkin’
3:30 – Break for water/snack
3:45 – Get to walkin’

5:00 – Set up camp for the night
5:30 – Re-freaking-lax
6:30 – Prepare and eat dinner

7:30 – Begin writing for What We’ve Got

9:30 – I don’t know…read or something
10:00 – Sleepy time

That’s probably ambitious.  And I’m sure that, come 7:30 or so,  I’ll be more exhausted than I can possibly imagine right now.  So if I need to cut anything, it’ll be an hour or two off the walking.  That would mean getting in later than June, of course – and Jeanette would probably brain me, if she heard that idea – but I’d rather sacrifice walking time than writing time. 

The other potential avenue is to cut out the client-work and save it for my Zero Days.  The idea would then be to double or triple up my client-work time on my Zero Days and then just submit my work in smaller chunks, thus creating the illusion that I’m working every day (shhh…don’t tell my clients).  If that’s the case, you can cut out the two-hour lead-up to my daily walk and either replace it with What We’ve Got time, more walking, or more leisure. 

If that’s the case, I imagine that my Zero Days will look something like this:

8:00 – Wake to an alarm
8:05 – Take Adama out for pooping; bury or otherwise dispose of said poop
8:10 – Feed Adama
8:15 – Eat breakfast
8:30 – Ghostwrite

12:30 – Eat lunch

1:30 – Secure Adama[1]
2:00 – Start laundry (at Laundromat, most likely, but sometimes in a stream, whenever I’m feeling like this guy)
2:30 – Find shower (either at hotel or, I don’t know, maybe a gym or something)
3:00 – Change laundry over
3:30 – Finish laundry
4:00 – Take Adama out for pooping; bury or otherwise dispose of said poop

4:05 – Work on What We’ve Got

6:30 – Dinner
7:30 – Leisure time (or more ghostwriting, if need be)
10:00 – Lights out

I’m sure the routine will get old, but I’m betting that the challenge of figuring shit out in a new town all the time will add a little spice to the life.  It’ll probably also slow down my schedule considerably.  I should likely expect less leisure time and for things to be far less regimented.  As I’ve been told, nothing ever goes according to plan.  So for now, these are mere hopes.  If I wind up having to cut some things out or slow some things down, that’s what I’ll do.  The road will be my master, and I its bitch.

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[1]On my Zero Days when I’m staying in a tent, Adama will have to be boarded in a (hopefully) nearby kennel.  Same goes for the days I’m staying in a non-pet-friendly hotel.  Pet-friendly hotel days, Adama will spend in the tent, which I’ll just pitch in the room.
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