Publish a novel

God, I’d almost forgotten about 43 things! I’m still working on the novel, and it’s going well. I hit my first real bit of actual, true writer’s block last week, and it bled over into this week some, but I’ve managed to beat it back down into its dark place. The novel is well over 90,000 words now – it’s closing in on 100,000 – but the good news is that I’ll be done soon. I’ll just have to edit the beast down to about 80,000 words (which is the goal for length). It’ll need a good spit and polish, but this book has turned out a hundred times better than I could have imagined.

Writing a book! I wanna publish it! Wouldn’t that just be the coolest thing?
I’ve got 105 pages so far, if it’s in chapter book form, and 55 if it’s in regular word mode!

I hope I didn’t miss anything. I was really exhausted and sick at the time I finished them up!

I hope they correct all the final catches I made and give it a final proofread! I think it’s shaping up pretty nicely, really. As far as I know I don’t have anything else to do before it gets printed.

This has been…quite a process, but I won’t bore you with the details. :) I worked for hours on it yesterday, and now even though it’s Monday I feel like it’s the weekend.

I want to publish a fictional novel some day, it’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.

I finally hit 80,000 words…unfortunately, the first draft still isn’t done. I underestimated how long the denouement and other third act elements would take to flesh out, but it’s all right. I’m optimistic. It might be another ten to twenty thousand words, but that only means I’ll have plenty to cut out for the second draft, which I plan on being a slender 75,000 words.

I’m still chuggin’ along on the book, nearing 70,000 words as we speak. The first draft with be at least 10,000 words longer than I had first anticipated, putting it up to at least 90,000 words, but I plan to cut a lot with the second draft. The first act drags quite a bit, so I’ll have to go in with the pruning shears and get rid of some of that flowery language that slows it down!

I finally hit the 60K-word mark this week. I got derailed over the last month with graduate school (excuses, I know).

It is going to take a week or two for me to get back into sitting at the desk and writing for hours on end, because the ‘get up and do’ bug has hit me pretty hard.

The story itself is still coming along well, though I know the revisions for draft two will be extensive, and I do NOT look forward to that!

Have a story to tell.. now I just have to put pen to paper (and then edit it, get an agent, then a publisher, etc etc!) Loooooong way to go.

I got the first of 3 batches yesterday. I was scared to look at first! They aren’t drastic.

Mostly, my editor cleared out adverbs and passive voice. I had a little more of both than I realized…crap. It’s helpful feedback for my current rewriting job.

An adverb or a “was” is not a crime once in a great while, though. In a couple of places I pushed back because I thought the sentence was right. We’ll see what she says. Mostly I thought she did a great job.