Wednesday, May 02, 2007

60,681 Words

Hi,
I really feel like I'm on the home stretch now, as I'm both writing forward from about 59,000 words and backwards from the ending. I feel considerably more comfortable with the whole thing now that I know for certain how it's all going to end. I expect that, having reached my target of 80-90,000 words, I will have to re-write and shuffle things around, tie up any loose ends that I might have forgotten about, and then of course there are the typos - especially those hard-to-spot ones that spell out a real word (not the right word) and therefore sneak past the spell-checker.

People keep suggesting things that I might do to earn money in the meantime: write short stories for magazines, write book reviews for book-clubs, etc. but I'm so desperate to finish this now. I foresee a long waiting period, after I start sending out drafts of my novel to publishers, when that sort of thing will be essential - perhaps more for my sanity even than for my bank balance. I already know what my 2nd book will be about (and the one after that!) but I don't think I will be one of those writers who can post their drafts one day and sit down to work again the next. I'll need to concentrate on placing the first one before my head is clear enough for another big project. Maybe I'll do some paintings. I'm pretty good at watercolours and I can do those detailed botanical pictures that are quite popular.
Speak soon.
A

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