On Re-reading My Crazy Novel

So I just finished re-reading The Fire in the Glass, the novel I began during NaNoWriMo 2007 and finished at the end of March 2008. Haven't looked at the 209,000 word monster for a year, so definitely came into it with as fresh a perspective as I think I could possibly have.

Overall, I liked it quite a lot; the concepts, story, and characters are all fairly sound, but it's very much a rough draft and suffers from ailments big and small. Ailments ranging from overly-melodramatic prose and characters crying on every single freaking page (whoops), to plot holes, loose-ends, and middle-of-the-novel-storyline-floundering. Basically it needs some heavy duty take-no-prisoners not-for-the-faint-of-heart editing. My favorite thing (not).

Also, whilst I was reading through, I tallied up all the characters I cruelly knocked off during the course of the novel. I knew it was a lot, but man.

Death Count:

• Secondary Characters—6
• Minor Characters—7
• Specifically Mentioned Soldiers—2
• Unborn Children—2
• Group of Soldiers One—23
• Group of Soldiers Two—300 +
• Undetermined Amount of Soldiers—lots and lots
• Off-screen—7 + 1 cat
• Metaphorical Deaths—3

So that's 347 if you don't count the cat or the metaphorical, plus the Undetermined Amount.

Basically, I kill everyone.

Well. Almost. :-)

That Blogging Horse

All righty, so it's been a while. And by a while I mean like half a year. But I figured I might as well poke that old blogging horse again. Plus I'm slightly bored and feel like procrastinating from my writing projects (as usual).

So. How about a quick update about all the (not) exciting things that I've been up to since November? Glad you asked. Here ya go:

Writing Stuff:

• Finished The Silver Crane at the end of March, clocking in at 193,000 words.
• Wrote a screenplay in April for Script Frenzy that is completely cringe-worthy and I'm trying my best to forget about. Definitely not as good as last year's.
• Currently editing a short story The Painter and the Sky for a contest. Short stories are troublesome beasts. Novels are easier.
• Pondering tweaking The Whale and the Tree yet again, mostly focusing on the ending--which I fear I might have kinda messed up with my edits last year--and some minor details throughout the rest of it. Then it's off to nab me an agent!
• Musing on ideas for this year's nano novel, which I've dubbed The Last Garden and will be set in the same universe-system as Rose Queen and Fire in the Glass. Should be pretty awesome if I can coax it into some semblance of a coherent plot.

Awesome Books:

• Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones (the movie, though different, is equally fantastic)
  
• A Curse Dark as Gold, by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Other Stuff

• Over the past week, I've gotten ridiculously addicted to the TV series Legend of the Seeker, which is, according to a comment I came across somewhere on the interwebs, "a guilty pleasure for Lord of the Rings fans who need their fix." Hilarious, and true.
• I'm learning to play the guitar! I've been at it a little over three weeks now, and am pleased to announce that I have callouses on the fingers of my left hand. I know three songs, and am not very good at them.

And that, ladies and gents, is that.