Good Morning World

[queenoftheskies]

I don't usually have time for morning posts before I leave for work, but I'm pleased with myself this morning, so I decided to just take the time to post.

I actually got work done for my job (e-mail work...trying to collect money from customers...big bucks), writing done, and had time to shower and huggle my kitties all this morning. I don't know why. Didn't really get up any earlier than usual.

So, I shall post morning stats for once, and then just add to them tonight. :)


Beginning of the End 1,318 words this morning

204,671 total words to date


I'm soooo close to finishing, I can taste it...but it's not going to happen by tomorrow, so I can't claim it as a total victory for 2004.

I do think it'll happen this weekend, though, so I'll just claim it as my FIRST victory for 2005. Woo-hoo!

Comments

[kimberlychapman.livejournal.com]

I think I must have missed the day where you went over 200,000. Congratulations! How does it feel to reach tome-country? :D

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

Actually, it's kind of scary right now because I'm not quite finished. I think I'll finish in the next 50 pages, but I'll hit 800 pages today for sure. I ended on 796 this morning.

And, that frightens me for two primary reasons.

The first is that I've heard new, unpublished authors have no chance of marketing something larger than 75,000-100,000 words.

The second is that it makes me wonder how much of that is story and how much is fluff. And, that, of course, makes me wonder if I'm a really crappy writer. (Cringe!)

[kimberlychapman.livejournal.com]

I sold a 182,000 word book as a first-time author. Turns out to a crappy publisher...but according to my editor and the acquisitions editor who accepted the book, I shouldn't count that against my book itself.

It's possible that your tome is full of fluff. That doesn't make you a crappy writer unless you leave it in there after you've gone through a few self-edits. I found that test readers didn't seem to consider the stuff I worried was fluff as fluff at all...in fact, when I had my first book test-read, it got longer afterwards because the readers were more apt to find places where I'd lazily left out details and they wanted to know!

I think it comes down to this: if a book is long and you have a scene that, if lifted out, changes no other part of the story, it might be fluff. It might also be nifty character development, but an editor is more likely to cut it.

I happen to write in multi-threaded, interconnected chains of cause and effect, though, so it's almost impossible for any scene of mine to get lifted out without seriously screwing up something later on. In my personal editing, I tend to remove extraneous scenes early anyway. If they're good, I save them as possible "web extras" should I ever become well known enough to have readers come to my website for extras. :)

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

The novel I'm currently working on is the first in a series of many books. Actually, the series is comprised of several mini series that come together at various points.

So, there are items contained in this particular novel, since it's the first one, that affect characters and events later in the series, but are not necessarily resolved or their meaning completely relevant in this first book.

That's what worries me, I guess. Whether or not I'm pulling that off well.

Also the fact that I do a lot of my writing when I'm exhausted, so I'm even less objective about it...and I'm not always objective as it is. I have a tendency to be VERY hard on my own writing. Much harder than I am on the writing of others.

Things to work on in 2005, I guess. :)

[kimberlychapman.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have stuff like that in my new series too. I'm slightly paranoid that an overzealous editor will consider some of the stuff I've dribbled in to be irrelevant, but it's *crucial* to something I have planned later on. For example, it might seem like fluff right now to have a certain character suggest that they're not the strongest swimmer, but several books down the line, that factoid will be quite relevant when they find themselves in the middle of the lake without a floatation device.

I suppose the idea is a good editor knows where your series is going as much as you do, and therefore won't axe those tidbits. Or better yet, they're so intricately woven that they can't be eliminated.

And I think anyone committed to quality is harder on themselves than anyone else. That's just normal! :)