Eight Tiny Reindeer

In-between compulsively checking my email, I've decided I want a break from revising and desperately need to write something NEW. A giant reworking of a previous novel just seems too daunting at the moment. Blech.

I'm brainstorming for a new story instead, initially sparked by a dream (don't worry, no vampires). It's really wanting to be a sort of fairy-tale retelling, so I might follow that thought and see where it leads. So far today I've been researching reindeer online and hitting up BehindTheName for name ideas, and I discovered that "Guadalupe" (the name of a street near me) means "river of the wolf," which I thought was extremely interesting.

Okay, that's all I've got. I think I need to check my email.

Seraphina

So obviously I chose reading over starting any projects yesterday. :-)

I finished Rachel Harman's Seraphina this morning, and I absolutely LOVED it!! It's about music and dragons and secrets and it was just lovely and amazing. The prose was beautiful, her world interesting and unique, and the characters rocked. I want more!! I first spotted it at the bookstore because it had almost the same title as a not-all-that-short-story I wrote a while ago (Seraphine—the name means like fiery creature or something like that), and the first few paragraphs—the first sentence, really—had me completely hooked. Finally snagged it at the library, and once I started I couldn't put it down. Amazing book.

Five stars and two thumbs up!!

Time…

Well, it's start-another-project time. Another novel rewrite? A brand new short story? Going back to poke at a novel I've been working on on-and-off for like sixteen years? The possibilities are endless. Of course I could just hunker down with a cuppa tea and read Seraphina, because it's super good so far. Hmmm… :-)

Also, queries have left the building!! Now the waiting begins………


Also also, I've been pondering how I like fantasy that's set in other worlds as opposed to fantastical elements being present in this world. Not sure how profound that is, but it might turn into a legit post at some point.

Okay, I'm off to finish my tea. :-)

Wordcounts and Doctor Who and Batman, oh my!!

Well, mostly good things to report over here!

My read-through went super good—I slashed and dashed as many words as humanly possible and got ye olde novel down to……………… 88,819 words. Not quite the 85K I was hoping for, but at least it's under 89K. You know. Ish.

I'm currently researching agents (I've been doing it on and off for a while now), honing my query letter and so on, and all that editing paid off—I revised and condensed that query, hooray!

Still working on getting my Scrivener compile feature up and running again (the tech support people are super helpful). Just got a general Scrivener update email today and it said that a couple of recent Doctor Who episodes were actually penned in Scrivener, which of course made my little geeky heart go pitter pat. :-D

Gonna poke at my novel a little more and make sure it's EXACTLY perfect, and then it's off to the query mobile, batman!!

Caution, Read Through In Progress: Verbiage Ahead!

So I wound up printing out my novel after all—had to resort to copying and pasting the whole thing into Pages and tweaking the formatting for a while but I got that bad boy printed out in the end!

I'm almost halfway done with my read-through/editing and I'm really liking this draft so far. I'm cutting as many extemporaneous words as possible and it feels good. I love that stage of editing when you're so on fire that deleting things no longer make you want to curl up in a hole and die but cackle with evil glee instead. :-D It remains to be seen how many words I've actually axed so far; I'm hoping it's in the neighborhood of 1K, though.

I've also rearranged some scenes in chapters three and four that were bothering me, which I think has solved the problem, and my newly rewritten sections are turning out to work with the flow of the novel much better than I thought, so that's encouraging.

Definitely on track to have the finalized Draft #3 ready to be sent out into the wide world by the end of the month. Hoorah!!

Hail the Conquering Author!

I finished!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just had half a chapter to go through this morning, which I did. I'm a little disappointed that I can't print it out yet, though—I'm having problems with the compile feature on my Scrivener (I LOVE this program and normally don't have any issues) and so can't get it into my word processor. Kind of frustrating, but I've contacted technical support and hopefully the issue will be resolved soon. I have a shiny ream of paper and a shiny new binder all ready to receive my new draft when it is!!

Final word count for Draft #3 is 90,607. Le sigh…

I might possibly be noodling on a short story idea… we'll see if anything happens with it!

Sheesh, three posts in three days! This is getting serious.

I think I need more tea.

Cheers!

Yea Verily, the Word Count Doth Swell

Only two chapters left!! Taking a bit of a break 'cause the last ones need special concentration and my head is starting to hurt (I clearly need more tea).

This revision is going quite well (I think!!). My only concern is the swelling of my word count. Why can nothing I write ever get SHORTER? I've peeked at my initial draft a couple of times over the last week to try and clear up some discrepancies (it didn't actually help), and was pleased to see that the second draft is a much better book than the first, and I think this third draft is making it even better. But not shorter. Never shorter. >:-( First draft was 70K, second draft was 80K, and now I'm pushing 90K! When I do my read-through I'm going to try and cut as much as possible. Hopefully I'll get it down to 85K, but I'm not holding my breath. Sheesh.

Okay. Break time. By which I mean bathroom cleaning time. And a shower. And more tea. Probably in that order.

Also, I think my post titles are possibly getting out of control. On the other hand, I can't just title my posts "update" all the time. That's super boring.

Okay I think I'm done now. :-)

But the children love the books!

I made friends with the library again! Hopefully this will keep me busy (and OUT of the bookstores) for awhile… :-)

I only have five chapters left in my revision! I'm SO excited. Gotta remember to buy some paper so I can print the thing out, reread, and make any necessary additional changes. Then it's query and change gears time! I'm super happy about that, in case you couldn't tell!!

Kind of eyeing this contest as a possibility. It's nice when they actually give you 10K words to work with, and the deadline is far enough away that I could potentially write something new. Hmmmm…

All righty, back to work!

April Showers Bring…… Revised Books!!

Well hopefully, anyway. :-) Here's some stats for Tuesday:


Chapters Revised: 13/29

Number of Hours Spent playing HayDay instead of revising: way too many

Tea Drunk Today: Two mugs of delicious Vanilla Black with Half 'n Half and a slice of homemade banana bread. Mmmmm.


Okay that wasn't very many stats, but whatever. :-) My ultimate goal is to have this novel completely revised and ready for queryin' by the end of April. Then I get to write something NEW!!!

Onwards!