Wow, you all!

I’m amazed: I signed up for the Clarion West write-a-thon on a whim to provide motivation for myself. I didn’t expect anyone to actually sponsor me, and yet here you are. 

Thank you! Inordinately! 

 I really do want to write you all stories, but you have to pick the topic. Otherwise I’ll choose something, and it will probably be utterly inappropriate. 

So how’s it going, you might ask, being entitled as a sponsor to investigate my writing progress.

Well, let’s see. My goal is to have a complete outline of Book of Phantoms by the end of the write-a-thon, of at least 5000 words. I have six weeks to do this thing, from June 22 to August 1.

So far: I have worked on the outline every day since June 22. Some days that involved hours of research, brainstorming, and note-taking, while other days contained only a few minutes of jotting. Still, every day.

And the 5000 words? The outline itself is currently 539 words, and I have 1403 words of actual prose that I’m totally counting. Why do I get to count that? I need to write the characters to understand how they react, so that I can do more and more evil but realistic things to them later in the book. So that would be 1942 words, or 39% of my goal, as of July 9 (I haven’t written anything other than science and blog posts yet today), or 42% of the time. So I’m a bit behind, but not too bad. 

Oooh, wait! I’m not behind at all, because I have more outline on the iPad that’s not counted in the total. There might even be the 158 words I need to get caught up.

I also have a LOT of words of character and place descriptions and historical background that will make it into the main text in artfully placed tidbits here and there, but I’d have to sort out my own words from those copied from various sources to count them, and I’m too lazy. Also, I’d rather spend my time writing than 

I have a complete if sketchy outline of the main plot, and am filling in subplots around it while also expanding the main plot. Novels have a lot of chapters. Never is that more obvious than when you’re trying to figure out what each of them should contain.

I’m still totally in love with this book, or at least the idea of this book. (Someone remind me of that when I’m slogging through the middle of the first draft, okay?)

In other writing news, none of the five stories I have out right now has been rejected yet, and one is actually shortlisted for the anthology for which it was written.