I am dangerously pleased with myself. Saturday I wrote 1300 words, Sunday 700 (in an airport!), Monday a measly 300, and today 1200 and counting. I admit to writing a lot of words for words’ sake–a hazard of challenging oneself to a quantity output without specifying quality–but the plot seems to be moving forward.
Even more encouragingly, the total word count for the project is around 49,600. I had thought that 50K was the threshold of noveldom, making this an exciting time for me (it WILL be a novel!). But then I looked up SFWA’s definitions and saw that they call anything over 40K a novel. So, it’s a novel. Or at least it will be when it’s finished. AND, I think that will happen this summer, despite a lot of offstage life chaos.
All of this optimism is dangerous, though. Tim Powers is always telling me that guilt is a powerful motivator, and it’s hard to feel guilty and proud at the same time. The writing equivalent of this fantastic blog post might happen. Go on, read it; I’ll wait.
In fact, read that instead of an excerpt this time. There’s too much plot in the last few days of writing, and I don’t want to spoil it. Maybe next time.