It's a good month.
So far this month I've gotten into grad schools and chosen the one I shall be attending next year. But if that wasn't enough, I just wrote the final word of the first draft of my novel!
I have totally earned my Caribbean vacation, oh yes.
Those who have requested to be on the novel filter may recall that at the end of December, my word counter looked something like this:
58,523 / 70,000
(83.6%)
and then you didn't hear from me 'till now. That's because on December 31st, the word counter looked like this:
58,574 / 70,000
(83.7%)
And right up to the 1st night of Boskone, it continued to look exactly like that. Then it gained about 500 words. It gained another 900 when I was doing grad school interviews (they left me alone for three hours, and I was bored), by which point I'd managed to conquer Chapter 18 - the bastardly place I'd been stuck.
After that, it was really all teaching myself to write batches of words again. I'm not entirely happy with the last crop of chapters, but it's only my first draft, and first drafts aren't meant to be the light of brilliance. There are scenes, like the last scene in the penultimate chapter, where I've gotten the mood down, and there are individual lines that I will want to keep in the revisions, but overall, this thing will go through massive changes before it meets the world in any form.
The final word tally of this draft, for the curious (and my own desire to look at the shiny progress bar), stands at:
70,657 / 70,657
(100.0%)
C'est tout, as some French-speakers may say. Possibly with the proper accents and everything. I shall be departing tomorrow later today for the sunny Caribbean, where I shall celebrate my new-found freedom by gorging myself on as much sci-fi and fantasy one can squeeze into hours of lying on a beach and explaining to my family that vacation means moving as little as possible.
See you on the other side!
I have totally earned my Caribbean vacation, oh yes.
Those who have requested to be on the novel filter may recall that at the end of December, my word counter looked something like this:
58,523 / 70,000
(83.6%)
and then you didn't hear from me 'till now. That's because on December 31st, the word counter looked like this:
58,574 / 70,000
(83.7%)
And right up to the 1st night of Boskone, it continued to look exactly like that. Then it gained about 500 words. It gained another 900 when I was doing grad school interviews (they left me alone for three hours, and I was bored), by which point I'd managed to conquer Chapter 18 - the bastardly place I'd been stuck.
After that, it was really all teaching myself to write batches of words again. I'm not entirely happy with the last crop of chapters, but it's only my first draft, and first drafts aren't meant to be the light of brilliance. There are scenes, like the last scene in the penultimate chapter, where I've gotten the mood down, and there are individual lines that I will want to keep in the revisions, but overall, this thing will go through massive changes before it meets the world in any form.
The final word tally of this draft, for the curious (and my own desire to look at the shiny progress bar), stands at:
70,657 / 70,657
(100.0%)
C'est tout, as some French-speakers may say. Possibly with the proper accents and everything. I shall be departing tomorrow later today for the sunny Caribbean, where I shall celebrate my new-found freedom by gorging myself on as much sci-fi and fantasy one can squeeze into hours of lying on a beach and explaining to my family that vacation means moving as little as possible.
See you on the other side!