I FINISHED!!! + Novel Stats

As of 2:19 this afternoon, I typed the final words of the second draft of Seer and I am DONE! Took me months longer than I’d hoped and I still have to do a read-through to make sure I made it better and not worse, but the important thing is that I FINISHED IT!! If you couldn’t tell by all the caps and exclamation points, I’m EXCITED!! 🙂

And in a long-standing tradition, I thought I’d give you some STATS:

Initial idea: December 23rd, 2009
Outlining: 10 days (January 7th—17th)
First draft: 7 weeks (January 18th—March 7th)
Word count: 70,018
Revision outline: 3ish weeks (March 25th—April 18th)
Second draft: 6 months and 3 weeks (April 19th—November 8th)
Word count: 81,937

So from initial idea to completed second draft took me about ten and a half months, and from draft one to draft two I gained nearly 12k, which still makes this the second shortest book I have ever written.

EXCITED EXCITED EXCITED!!!

60K and Beyond!

Yikes, I can’t believe it’s March. When did that happen? Wasn’t yesterday Christmas 2008? I’m pretty sure it was. Weird. I never got around to buying a 2010 calendar, so I’m using last year’s. As long as I don’t look at the days it’s not too confusing. 🙂

So, noveling. It’s coming along, more-or-less. I kinda wish it was over, but if I don’t stop procrastinating I’ll never get it done. I’m soooooo close now! Just gotta get my female MC to figure out how to save my male MC, and Robert’s your father’s brother (I already know, but she doesn’t. It’s very frustrating. True love conquers all, and so on. :-)).

Anyhoo, in lieu of anything more interesting to report, I give you this week’s STATS:

Word Count: 60,881
Chapters Completed: 22/26
Number of Times Author has Stopped Action to Reveal Pertinent Backstory: 3 (ugh, I KNOW)
Number of Old People Being Disturbingly, Nay, Disgustingly Kissy-Face in Scooters: 2
Number of Times Author has Eaten Ice Cream This Week: 0 (very, very sad)
Number of Episodes Author is Behind on in LOST: 3

Yep, I think that about covers it. 🙂

The Beginning of the End…

Happy 5-week-a-versary to Seer!!

It’s the beginning of the end, and this novel is getting INTENSE. Yikes. You don’t even know. I always enjoy writing something that’s new and different from anything I’ve ever written before, and Seer certainly fits the bill. My brain, I tell you, is a scary place to be. I hope I can make it through to the end relatively unscathed…

Also, did I mention that this book exploded in my subconscious and became a TRILOGY? ‘Cause it did. I’ll definitely be taking a break before tackling the next two books, but still. I can’t believe this all snowballed from a short story idea.

Do you SEE why I can’t write short stories?

Yeah.

Time for some stats:

Word Count: 52,072 words (I FINALLY MADE IT TO 50K!!!!! 🙂 🙂 :-))
Chapters Completed: 18.75/26
Intensity Level: 96%
Number of Times Author has Gotten Disturbed: 4
Evilness of Villains: Ridiculously Evil
Number of Shocking Revelations: 2/4
Number of Times Author has had Trouble with Pacing: 7
Number of Times Author has Dreaded Revisions: 12
Number of Times Author has Wished Sci-Fantasy was a Viable Genre: 100,000,000

40k Friday!

Woot! I had a pretty great writing week, so you all get another stats post. Lucky you! 🙂

Word Count: 40,040 (I just figured out how to add two more words to produce that lovely round number :-))
Chapters Completed: 13/26 (For those keeping track, I decided to add a new chapter to the outline, different from the one previously nixed.)
Novel Weirdness Level: 94%
Number of Times Author has Listened to Laura Veir’s July Flame Album Whilst Writing: 40+
Chapters Left Until First Kissage: 1.5 (YAY!!!! :-))
Number of Random Surnames Invented: 2
Number of Times Characters have been Stopped by Other Characters in Hallways to Have Important Conversations: unfortunately way more times than I can count
Number of Scenes that Feel Suspiciously Regency: 1
Number of Airship Rides Thus Far: 1
Number of Merlin episodes watched since last Thursday: 15
Number of Pulled Muscles During Embarrassingly Non-Vigorous Jogging: 1 (OW!)

Here’s to a great weekend and 50k by my book’s four week-aversary on Tuesday!!

30k!!

Not a very creative post title, but you’ll have that. I was secretly hoping to be at 40k today, but 10k a week seems to be all I can muster lately… which makes my hopes of finishing this thing by the end of the month kinda slim. But we shall see. Still, 30k is nothing to sneeze at, right?

In other news, whilst getting slightly *cough* VERY *cough cough* addicted to the adorable BBC show Merlin this week, I got to thinking about my two main characters from On Journeys Bound / The Blind King with much fondness, and decided to re-read the beginning of The Blind King which, if you’ll recall, was the second of two unfinished novels attempted during NaNoWriMo last November. I read it—sat there for two hours reading it—and you know what?

I really, really liked it. I mean it had all the usual rough draft kinds of flaws, but overall I was heartily impressed with myself. I only wish it had a middle and an end in addition to a beginning. Guess that’s something I’ll have to fix, right? Anyways, I was encouraged to discover that November wasn’t quite the complete and total failure I thought it was. YAY!

And now, the moment you all have been waiting for—this week’s stats!

Word Count: 30,030 (yes I stopped in the middle of a sentence so I could have that lovely number)
Chapters Completed: 10/25
Age of Characters: 16! Finally!! Now they can properly fall in love! 🙂
Number of Ominous Conversations Overheard: 1
Number of Times Author had to Bribe Herself to Keep Writing: 7
Number of Times Author was Sitting in Barnes & Noble and Saw a Strange Person in a Bright Yellow Skin-Tight Over-the-Face Cat Suit: 1 (Yes. Really.)

20K and on till morning…

Happy end-of-Tuesday, everyone! Today marks my WIP’s two week anniversary, so of course it’s time for some stats:

Word count: 20,426
Chapters completed: 6 of 25 (I nixed one of the chapters from my outline because it wasn’t adding anything to the plot, in case you’d noticed the discrepancy with last week’s stats.)
Status of characters: Sleepy. (They had a big day. :-))
Number of times the author has gotten disturbed: 2
Number of strange things Googled* since last week: 3
Next up: a huge argument, followed by a deathly illness
Guesstimated total word count at this juncture: 80,000

Writing is going pretty well—I had a few slow days last week, but have been making up for it so far this week. The Plan is to finish the rough draft by the end of February, which means I have 26 days to write approximately 60,000 words—doable, if I can keep the momentum. We’ll see.

Have I mentioned that this novel is strange? ‘Cause it is. It’s kinda freaking me out. As I’m writing, I’m learning more and more about the world and everybody’s motivations and exactly what it is that my evil government is up to and it’s a little disturbing. My main characters are thus far unaware that they are being manipulated, and it’s kinda sad. 😦 Writing is so weird. It gives you these connections to people and places that, really, you invented yourself, and yet they don’t really feel invented at all. It’s like they’re real human beings who actually exist somewhere, and they pop up every now and again to tell you stories about themselves. Very strange. But then I’m rather crazy.

Anyway.

In other news, I’ve gotten a hefty pile of rejection letters for The Whale and the Tree, and am contemplating letting the whole query process rest for a while. Sad, but true. Hope springs eternal, however, so I’ll probably send at least a few more out. We shall see.

And that is pretty much that.

______________________

* One of these happened to be “drilling holes in the head,” which led me to read about trepanning, which was a key factor in disturbing myself.