Ira is ded.
D-E-D. Ded.
He wrote all the words, there are none left. 8,000 of them today, which is a new person record. It wasn’t quite enough, I’m afraid. There are still two major sequences left to write…but I can feel in my gut that these sequences work, which means it would really be a waste of time to rush through them just to say I was done today.
No…I’m going to actually spend time on them and give them the words and the proper pacing they deserve. I know these scenes aren’t going to end up cut…or at least, I think they won’t. They’re worth the time and effort.
I’m at 100,000 words exactly. That’s where I stopped today. This manuscript could easily be 110,000 words. Yikes. That’s 15,000 more than I’d planned. Uuuuggghhhhh. At least that (hopefully) means cutting rather than expanding. And…that *is* what it means. There is no reason for this novel to be more than around 95,000 words. That was the length for the first book, and even that one had a couple parts here and there with (arguably) some pacing issues…I ended up keeping those parts for the character development value…but still. I just mean that 95,000 words already has some inherent built-in slower parts. It doesn’t need to get any slower than that, or more exhausting if we’re talking about action.
Anywho…exciting things are on the horizon. I was going to keep it a secret till next week, but I’ll just spill the beans now: since the manuscript is very nearly complete, finally, I decided to take the plunge and put it up for pre-order on Amazon. Just a month ago, the thought of doing that was terrifying and completely overwhelming.
Well, it was still very overwhelming this morning…but rather than paralyzing terror about it, I now feel a steady resolve. Exhausted resolve at this particular moment, but resolve, nonetheless. My mantras really served me well. Finally!
Just keep writing.
Trust the process.
That second one really is the key to the first one. This manuscript is a shiiiiiit festival…but now that I’m nearing the completion line on the rough draft, I feel so much more confident that I will figure out what needs to be fixed, and that I will fix it. I have faith. Finally. I can do this.
That’s what I have for you lovely people tonight. I’m up tomorrow before thanksgiving to get some more done…but we’re probably looking at finishing on Friday or Saturday now. Sigh. We’ll see. Wish me luck!
Artwork tonight is from Simon Stålenhag, and it reminds me of Ferndale for some reason.