Today was a pretty productive day. Word count before I retire for the evening: 81,812 words.

I just finished writing a half-decent action sequence. I love writing scenes that get my heart pounding and really wind me up. ^_^ Unfortunately, it’s hard to stop when you get going like that, but tomorrow I’m journeying up to the great white north…well, just Vancouver, but still Canada nevertheless…so it’s early to bed and early to rise for me. Dunno if I’ll get to do any writing tomorrow, but I will try. This weekend’s looking pretty dismal for me as far as time to dedicate to my novel goes, but I am looking at many months of plenty of time to work so I can make up for it later.

*sigh*

Now to figure out how to make this train of thought take a hiatus…

So, in my writing today I had to actually stop and think about a scene before I could write it. Usually I just fly by the seat of my pants, but I found myself staring stupidly at part 4, looking for a way to get myself where I wanted to go. After breakfast, a cup of coffee (a LARGE one, at that), a small snack, lunch, and idly distracting myself on mySpace and Facebook, I finally convinced myself to step back and just think about my next move. It worked, this time, and I was able to push through to the next bit, but it was slow going. I still have trouble figuring out how I managed to write over 50K in roughly 20 days and then only 30K in the last three months. It just flowed so easy in November. I guess that must be because I had no plan when I started and now I have too many things I want to put in. It will be a struggle to fit everything into part four, but with careful editing later, 4 semi-equal parts should be achievable. In my rewrite of the 2nd half of part one I managed to expand it to 28K and some change.

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Total words, as of this moment, including only first drafts of all parts, currently equals 79,052 words.

This total does not reflect my recent reworking of Part 1 (as I’ve only fixed about half of it) LOL.

I will try to update daily as I write.

Hello and welcome to my blog. Here is where I will be recording my progress through my novel.

Begun in November 2007 for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), what started out as a frantic 50,000 word challenge has taken on a life of its own. My current word count is well over 75,000 words, to be updated later with an exact count, and is divided into 4 parts, 3 of which are finished and in rough draft form. The parts are somewhere around 25K words each, but, as I said, they are only rough drafts. The 25K just seemed to be a nice round number with which to end each part. As scattered-brained as I am, I’ve done a bit of reworking on part one, completely eliminating an entire character, despite the fact that the final part is still only on page 5. It’s okay to laugh here. I find it pretty funny myself.

Anyway, I’ve decided to create this blog to sort of make notes on this project for anyone who might want to follow me down this path of insanity, or maybe even for myself to go back and shake my head sadly at my silly misguided notion that I could actually write a real novel. As things go from completion of rough draft to harrowing rewrite to hair-pulling frustration as my friends and family assist me in perfecting it even further to the inevitable writing of the query letter to publishers and eventual receiving of rejection letters, I will attempt to post all about the smiles and frowns, the ups and downs of this wacky world of noveling.

So can I call myself an author if I haven’t been published yet?

I think so, although I feel a bit silly for it. Being an author does not necessarily mean being good at what you do or even being paid for what you do.

All I know is that I’m creating something. It’s a story. I like it. So far my friends and family see the potential too. Whether or not the publishing world agrees with me…well, I think that’s getting ahead of myself. For now, I need to finish that pesky part four.

But welcome to the dungeon, where I am shackled to my laptop. I’m a prisoner to my art! Come along and join the madness!