Well, in case of you are interested, lately I’ve revising my manuscript, even though I swore it was done. And it is, as far as submitting it to a publisher is concerned, but since we’re a bit delayed on that and I’ve got nothing better to do, I’ve been fixing it up. There’s always a sentence that could be said better or a detail that slipped past me.
I have a confession to make. I said my book is 707 pages long, but I failed to mention I like to have the font on the larger size. Make it one size smaller and it’s two hundred pages shorter. Still, the material point is that it’s 202,000- 203,000 words. And, big surprise, with this round of revision, I’ve added a few pages. I just can’t help myself; there’s always more to say.
NaNoWriMo is in less than two months! Gah, that was fast! Seems just the other day I was under that torture. Well, the last two years I’ve used it to fill in the gap I had in my book. I had written the beginning and the end, but the middle was a complete mystery. So, I used Nano to force myself to write it. I ended up gutting most of it, but it at least got me through and helped to refine exactly what I wanted out of the plot and characters. Anyway, this year I’ll be using it to write the sequel. I’m super nervous and super scared and super excited!
Just the other night, Friday night by name, I was watching the Star Trek episode ‘Empath’ and somehow that got me going on a new story idea. I thought about it a couple of days, and then just started writing these parts. Unfortunately, writing it down is what killed it. To my shock and horror, though it was supposed to be completely unconnected, my main character from my big manuscript reappeared in this story! I yelled at her to get back to her own story, but, being as stubborn as I am, she just laughed at me. I still haven’t solved that problem. Furthermore, this story has too many tragedies: so-and-so dies, this-and-that happens, etc, all at the same time. If this story goes anywhere, (which is looking doubtful) I’ll have to define exactly what I want this character to overcome, and how exactly that ties in with her particular problem.