Friday, November 12, 2004

sh-sh-shaking

I wrote the first half of chapter three tonight in an hour at Starbucks; I only had an hour because I watched 'The OC' first, then went to Starbucks around 9:30, and the one on Castro St. inexplicably closes at 10:30 instead of 11. Damn. Then I came home and got sucked into Comedy Central, and I started reading up on how to write a Scottish accent (because it's been awhile since I've read any Scottish romance novels, they're not as abundant as I would like them to be), and now I really need to go to bed because I have tons of work to do tomorrow. Sigh. I would have liked to have had my characters finally meet each other tonight, but it's not going to happen. The second half of chapter three will get the proverbial ball rolling, though. I hope to write it tomorrow night.

In many ways I think that posting the novel as I go is good for me; I'm such a perfectionist typically that I don't like people reading my stuff until either a) it's perfect or b) I still have the excuse that I haven't proofread yet. And I'm not proofreading, so I'm sure any roughnesses will come out easily in later edits. But, when you're trying to write 50000 words in a month, you don't really have the luxury of prolonged, perfection-ensuring edits.

I'm currently at 7,962 words, which is a great start, but a little less than an eighth of the way to my goal. Even worse, I looked at the avon romance webpage last night, and they want books for publication that are in the 100000 word range. Definitely doable, since they won't even be married by the time I hit 10,000 words, and there is a lot of story left to tell...but I don't know if I can write 90,000 more words in November, since it's almost half over. We shall see...I'm not giving up yet. Maybe it's a more realistic goal to say that I have to hit 50000 by the end of November, and then finish it/edit it by New Years so that I can start contacting publishers?

Anyway, I think it's bedtime!

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