To Celebrate

I think it's good to reward yourself when you've accomplished something. And I have recently finished a first draft of a novel and a short story. So, I might get myself:

a Meyer lemon tree
this pen
this print or
this one

Now to decide...

Reading List 2010

Amigoland, Oscar Casares
Making a Literary Life, Carolyn See (read the whole book but I focused on the revision section because I will be revising in a few weeks)
Totally Killer, Greg Olear (book club)

Word Count: Done!

I am finished with what some writers call the "down draft" (just getting it down) and another writer calls "draft zero."

It is shorter than I thought it would be and I now know two things. I will have to cut a lot of filler where I was figuring out what was going on, and now that I know what's happening there's some detail I will need to add. Overall I would guess the cutting and adding will cancel each other out and I will end up with approximately the same length, plus or minus 5k words.

I also need to do some research. I like to have the story part done first, and then do the research to back it up. I want just enough background to tell the story convincingly. The reason for this is that I really like research and can entertain myself for far too long with interesting factoids and not ever get to the, you know, actual writing part.

So now that I am "done" for this little bit, I will set novel #2 aside for the next four-six weeks. I'm going to do some reading, some research, and may revise one short story and write another. Then in April or thereabouts I will start the next draft.

I finished a half marathon on Sunday and finished this first draft on Tuesday. Not a bad week all in all, except that I am sick. I spent much of today sleeping and I think I'll get to bed early again tonight. Hopefully I'll be healthy enough to return to work tomorrow.

Word Count

One chapter left!

Chef

Chef, originally uploaded by ydutcho.

Zoe helped me make some pancakes this morning. Sort of.

Word Count

Today was a good writing day. I am definitely going to come in short of my 80k goal. I have only two-three chapters left to write, but I also know I'm going to have quite a few holes to fill in on the next draft.

Either way, the end is in sight!

Word Count

If I finish in 500-1,000 word increments, so be it.

Word Count

This may not seem like great progress but I'm getting to a weird place where I need to figure out where a few elements in the story go, and those decisions impact other things. So even though the word count is not terribly high, it's a productive time for me.

I also think this might be an unusual case when I write less than I was expecting. Normally I overwrite and end up having to cut. This may be an exception to my normal tendencies.

However, I shouldn't be surprised. When I first thought of this idea I imagined it as a novella and just figured I'd might as well shoot for 80k because that would put this story in the typical novel range. I'm not going to force the length, though. No padding. But right now I'm thinking I probably won't make 80.