Novel Progress: 90,000 Words

[mabfan]

This evening, I hit 90,000 words on the novel.

I'm not about to go into all the details I've done before, because I've caught a cold and feel rather crappy. I took a nap this afternoon, and I think I need another one. But despite being sick, I wanted to manage 1500 words today, and I'm pleased that I did.

Part Two is now 176 pages long, and there's still more of it to write before I get to Part Three. This 100,000 word novel is definitely going to go longer than that, at least in first draft.

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

Refuah shlaimah.

Sending chicken soup and ginger thoughts your way...

[donovanstitch.livejournal.com]

I second that, and offer renewed props and plaudits!

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

Naps are very good things. Feel better soon!

And hey, always better to write more than you need so you can chop, rather than write too little and have to figure out how to stretch...

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

This 100,000 word novel is definitely going to go longer than that, at least in first draft.

Ah, so you write fat? I tend to write lean, then fatten up the prose on revision.

Feel better!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. For most of my life, I tended to write short, with stories that petered out after only a few thousand words. I had to learn how to write longer, and one of the things I did was make a mistake with padding my longer stories so that they needed cutting.

With the way my writing works, I'm delighted that this novel is running long. It'll be a lot easier for me to cut than it would be for me to figure out what more I could add. And, so far, most of what I've been writing does feel like it belongs in the book.

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

My fattening up tends to be along the lines of going, "Oh yeah, I should actually describe the damned setting, shouldn't I? And I know why the protagonist made this logical leap, but the readers sure as hell don't, so maybe I should show some intervening steps." I just have a tendency to have my zero drafts be very bare-bones, but at least they get the plot laid out from start to finish.

[zhaneel69.livejournal.com]

Go you!

Zhaneel