There are many things I should have been doing this evening, one of which could have been making some money to help pay the bills this month, but just as I couldn't face that task this morning, I couldn't face it this evening, so I did something else that desperately needed doing... I wrote the first draft of Sarah's synopsis.

The full manuscript has been off to an agent for several months now, without a reply, so it's long past time to send it on to other people, but before I could do that I needed a synopsis.

I'd written a synopsis long ago, for the second draft of the book, but the beginning of the book changed so dramatically that I needed a new synopsis.

I've been putting off this task forever because I have only vague clues about what editors and agents are looking for in a synopsis.  I've asked fellow authors, and they've graciously answered me, but I've yet to be able to translate what they say into terms and actions that I understand. (Read more)

I'm job hunting again. 

This job (with the bank), like the last one, has been wonderful and I've learned tons, but I need more hours.  So, I'm on the hunt for a full-time job... which is sucking up all the energy that I'd normally spend writing.

I've updated my resume, found a couple places to apply to (one of which I'm really excited about), and today I'm writing cover letters and sending applications off.

The agent is still sitting on my manuscript.  I emailed her last week to confirm she got it, and she did.  So it's more waiting.  Which is fine, as I don't have the brain cells to deal with it if she did get back to me. (Read more)

The manuscript is done and finally off to the agent that I met at DucKon.

And now I wait.

While I wait, I start on the next book.

But first I finish cleaning off my desk so I have room to start on the next book.

(FWIW, this is my 500th blog entry.  Interesting timing.)

Sure, I can tweak it from now until the end of time, but the 3rd major pass is done.  I'm contacting beta-readers to see who can turn it around fairly quickly so I can get it off to the agent who's agreed to read it.

My fingers are crossed that I haven't screwed up anything too major... we shall see.  :-)

But... it's done.  I typed the first words of this book on 1/20/2006, so... it's been a long ride, and I can't believed how much I've learned in the process.

Now, I just need to write the other six related books, and edit the 1st manuscript I wrote, and the other three books of that series, and... and...

However... right now, I'm going to bask in the fact that after 3.5 years... it's done.

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I wiped myself out staying up so late last night, and accomplished basically nothing the entire day today.

But forced myself to get at least one chapter done.  It didn't take much work, just some word tweaking, but I can't do more.

It's 5k more words done, and that's a good thing.

Edit Progress (7/29/09)

Complete (99.2k of 113k)

I knew the pace would pick up once I got past the beginning of the book, but I must admit that today's accomplishment has pleased me.  And there is a good possibility that I will get the damn thing done tomorrow, or the next day at the latest.

Chapter 21, the last one I finished today, is originally chapter 17, and there are a total of 24 chapters in the draft.  So I have seven more chapters to edit, and I don't think there are very many changes in those chapters.

In the draft, the first 17 chapters encompassed 88k words, and the new draft is up to 95.3k words.  Giving me a finished estimate of about 120k words... about what I'd expected.

I want to do an editing pass with the grammar checker, and that will take a while, but the end is finally in sight!!!!

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I finished chapter 13 today, which required a fair amount of updating of chapter 12, because they're in essence one big scene.  But they are done and feel good.

Plus I did a first pass on chapter 14.  It only needs a once over when I have a few more brain cells.

More done, more to do, but getting there.

Edit Progress (7/27/09)

Complete (63.0k of 113k)

It was a busy day today with lots of non-writing stuff that needed to be done... but I was up at 6am with the story running through my head and got an early start.  So with a late ending added onto it, I managed to get Chapter 12 done, and another 4800 words edited. 

I ended up shuffling the chapter like a deck of cards to get everything to work out given the new beginning of the book.  In the end, I added ~400 words onto the count for the chapter, but I don't know how many were new words vs. how many removed words.

I think the next chapter will stand as it is, just a quick polish.  We'll see from there.

I'm debating how to make the status bar a little less biased because the 113k is the length of the draft I'm working from, and I've completed editing 47k words of that draft... editing them into 54k words in this draft.  How's a good way to portray that?  Must ponder. (Read more)

I'm not holding my breath that I'm finally done with the hard part, but I finally got a decent amount of words done today.  13.9k total words edited today.

The one scene that I thought was going to cause me terrible trouble actually mostly stood as it was in the previous draft... to my vast surprise.  A tiny bit of rewording, but nothing like the major rewrite I'd expected.

So, the bar moved quite a bit today, and I feel good about it.

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No wonder I was having trouble naming my characters in this book. 

After spending three hours sorting out all the people in the book, I get to the end discover I have 50 named characters in this book, plus a bunch of unnamed ones.  And the really disgusting thing is that almost all of them will appear in the other books in the series.

The amusing bit was that I've been working on this book for 3.5 years, and I just discovered today that I'd never named the heroine's brother.  He's always "my brother" or "your brother".  So, he's now officially named, and given the changes in the book, his name might actually show up in the book... but I kind of doubt it. (Read more)