State of the Book #3: April 29, 2012

Hello again! I hope you're all doing well out there in the ether. It's been a lovely day here in Piedmont North Carolina-- clear skies, sunshine, warm but not too warm. Since I'm a bit of a vampire, I mostly kept to the shade-- got to preserve my ghastly pallor, after all. I did drag myself to the Y for a Zumba class, though, and while I was there I saw a food-truck festival, part of our local campaign against Amendment 1. I had all my gym stuff with me, so I couldn't stay long, but I did have a  Locopop and a nice little walk.  I'd like to live closer to downtown someday, so I could get to stuff like that more easily.

As for the book, you'll be happy (I hope) to know that I'm now editing Chapter 3. The new working title is THE WOODS AND THE CASTLE, though that might very well change when I get closer to the end. The manuscript now weighs in at about 31,000 words-- around half the projected total. So far I've been putting out about a chapter a month, but I'd like to do better than that-- it would be great if I could finish before the end of July. 

After WOODS/CASTLE is finished, I have decided to get started on the SNOWBERRY rewrite. It looks like it'll be a trilogy-- there seems to be a natural law that requires every YA fantasy writer to produce a trilogy. It's much easier coming up with titles for this project, for some reason: the second book will keep the title of SNOWBERRY, and the first will be called PUCK'S LUCK. 

I've also been working on the short story I mentioned last time. I'm on the second draft now. You may recall that I was supposed to have it done three weeks ago? I seem to have a much harder time writing short stories than I do novels-- which is unfortunate, because they're extremely educational. You can read two of my earlier stories here and here. 

I'm off to Game of Thrones night now-- missed last week and immediately regretted it-- so that's all she wrote for now. Have a great week!

--Kate

State of the Book #2: April 9, 2012

Sorry, you guys! I did mean to update last week, but Sunday ended up a little busier than I expected. Actually, it looks like that's going to be a regular thing: some friends of mine are hosting a regular Game of Thrones night at their house, and now that I'm actually in the right country to watch it with them I'm happy to spend my Sunday evenings that way! I'll try to do my Sunday updates a little earlier in the day so there won't be a problem. Today was a bit of an exception, since it was Easter: we had a nice (secular) family dinner, and there was a lot of cooking and cleaning and general puttering to be done. Delicious food, though!

The book: she is progressing. Not as fast as I'd like, of course, but slowly and steadily is better than nothing (and probably better than quickly and sloppily, in the end). I mentioned last week that I'm now on the third-- and, I hope, the final-- draft of this story (which still doesn't have a permanent title. Waiting for inspiration!). Tonight I finished Chapter 2-- which doesn't sound like much, but it's out of a projected five or six (I write long chapters!). According to Scrivener, my total word count so far is exactly 20,750, which puts me about a third of the way to where I want to be.

I've also started a couple of side projects. One of them is secret-- you'll find out about it if it works out the way I hope it will. Or if it fails, I guess-- that way I can tell you what not to do if you're attempting a project like this one. The other one is a short story, which I was "ordered" to have finished and submitted by Tuesday night. The order came from a friend of mine-- another writer who knows about my productivity issues and lack of self-confidence. I hope I'll have it at least most of the way finished by the time our writers' group meets on Tuesday!

I've used a lot of exclamation points tonight. I think I'd better go, before the punctuation police show up and tell me not to write anything else when it's so clearly past my bedtime. Happy vernal equinox to all of you, and have a lovely week!