Novel Watch #17: +5(!) pages [52 total]
Wow! My most productive day yet, in which I added 5 pages to my manuscript (one previous Novel Watch was also +5 pages, but covered multiple days). This thing is really starting to gel, I think, and that helps it go faster. I’m still getting a better sense of the characters, and to a certain degree this section is driving itself forward. It also helps that I got started earlier and that I’m up almost until 4 in the morning.
My little book just moved up my top 15 list, too! Now it’s at #5, and will be staying there for quite some time, as you can probably tell from the following table. I’m rapidly approaching Official Novel Length, at 40,000 words.
| # | Title | Word Count | date range |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Myth series (combined) | 106,121 | 1996-1998 |
| 2 | Guardian Nova | 94,079 | 2003-2004 |
| 3 | Godplay | 90,413 | 2001 |
| 4 | ThatPlace series (combined) | 79,533 | 1999-2000 |
| 5 | STS&TE | 34,033 | 2007 |
| 6 | Danger Zone | 31,564 | 1998-1999 |
| 7 | The Dark Lord’s Return | 30,239 | 1998 |
| 8 | Mushed-Up Egyptian Myths | 29,497 | 1997 |
| 9 | Messed-Up Norse Myths | 24,374 | 1997 |
| 10 | ThatPlace: The Joining | 21,971 | 1999 |
| 11 | Mixed-Up Greek Myths | 19,939 | 1996 |
| 12 | Sweetdreams series (combined) | 17,708 | 2001-2003 |
| 13 | Evil Takes a Vacation | 15,629 | 2002 |
| 14 | Giving up the Ghost | 15,468 | 2007 |
| 15 | The Knights of Revolution v2 | 14,304 | 1997 |
Most of what I worked on was in Chapter 10. This section involves a trip into town, meeting new and interesting people, and visiting the local church. Bandolor got to make a dramatic speech, which was really fun to write, and then Adrianna got put on the spot.
Here’s how she feels about that:
With a magnanimous wave, Bandolor motioned for Adrianna to join him on the dais. The crowd eyed her with curiosity, much like that which she’d received on their way through town. Hundreds of pairs of eyes bored down on her, and she wanted to just shrink away. A few years ago she’d had a dream, almost the archetypal nightmare in which the dreamer goes to class only to discover that she’s naked, only in Adrianna’s dream, she’d been wearing normal clothes. It was everyone else who was naked, bare from head to foot, and shaved of all hair, even their eyebrows and lashes. She could still remember the looks those naked dream people had given her, the odd questioning expressions on their faces, and this situation right now brought that image rushing back. She felt like she was fully clothed in a church full of nudists.
Next up: Things get really bad. Yay!
August 29th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Woohoo! #5! You’ll definitely be there for longer than you have the other slots, but you’ve got to figure that it only took you 24 days (well, since you started your novel watch at least, so maybe we’ll round it off to 25) to write 34,033 words, which means you should be sliding into the #4 slot in…um…er…[gets out calculator]…[can't figure out which formula to use]…well, seeing as how you’ve written 34,033 words/25 days, if you’re writing on average 1361.32 words/day, and you have 45501 words to go to PASS ThatPlace, then my calculator says you only have 33.42417653 days until you do so. That’s just barely over a month! How long did ThatPlace take you to write?
Picky proofreader sidenote: funny though it is, “church fool of nudists” should = “church full of nudists.”
-your sis
August 29th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
c1:
Well, it’s true that I’ll probably only be there for a month, if I keep up the pace … or I could get even faster. We’ll see. Looking at my notes, it seems that I wrote all of my ThatPlace stories in the space of a year and two months (6/30/1999 to 9/3/2000). A better comparison might be Godplay — I wrote that in a single year, over a span of about 11 months (but only 9 months of writing time, as it seems I took most of June and August off). In that light, I’m running at about 3x my previous monthly word count! Not bad at all, if I can keep it up.
Ooooh yeah. Church FULL of nudists. That’s what happens when one writes at 3:30 in the morning and then posts excerpts without proofreading. Stay tuned for “a crutch full of nudists” and “a church full of noodles”! What wackiness is next??
Seriously, though, there’s going to have to be some major proofreading on this baby at some point. Not now, but eventually.
August 29th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I shall expect “babes, rides, cash, and wacky tobaccy” for my inevitably invaluable proofreading skills. You may deliver this in advance.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Given the u-o mix-up of your previous typo, let’s just say that the first time I read “a crutch full of nudists” I saw something completely different… Boy, now that’s a picture to go to bed with!
3x your previous monthly word count is pretty awesome.
Jacob, if you start doing anything with tobaccy besides talking about it and adjectiving it with wacky, I’ll slap you upside the head. Just sayin’. (what’s the quote from, anyway?)
August 30th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
C1: the quote is actually of my own invention. Make of that what you will. As for the tobacco, I don’t smoke tobacco per-se. On the issue of the “whacky tobaccy” I comment not.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Well, as long as we’re clear then. ::scratches head::