Finished a novel and stuff
It's always a sort of surprise when I finish writing something. For a bunch of reasons.
- it doesn't usually end where I think it will
- or the way I thought it would
- I never estimate the length correctly
- the difference between the vivid scattering of ideas that first started it and the mammoth I finish with is always jarring
So, Ellie & Pete (since I'm starting a fab new trend where I use character names as book title placeholders) started out a notepad text file with 3 bits on it at least 8 years ago. Then I had a dream about it. Then I decided to use Nano to flesh it out after a week of making scene notes on my commute.
By Christmas I was at about 62K words I think...then I got my awesome new super-light laptop for the train. It doesn't have Word on it so I was literally writing in the default text-editor program with no page or word count blindly from Xmas on.
Finished last night and here is the final count:
Pages: 287 (not yet double spaced)
Word Count: 98K (why am I so wordy? EVEN WHEN I DON'T THINK I AM)
I'm getting conflicting reports of what an average romance/chick-lit word count is but I think I'm at the top end. I mean 100K is always heading into fantasy territory.
We'll see.
I'm lying near the line of a new genre trend getting dubbed "New Adult" that's like the YA version of chick-lit (least that's what I've come to understand <-- 10 points if you read that in Jack Skellington's voice) but as my characters spend most of the book in their twenties I'm not sure I qualify.
At least I'm a bit clearer this round on what exactly I've written. :) 10 points for me? Anyone? Bueller?
sigh.
Anyway, achievement! Romance: completed.
