Progress: Nowhere!

Ugh! I got sick last Saturday and I'm still sick! I have gotten absolutely nowhere with my book or with any of my writing. My self-imposed deadline of starting to query by November 1st is beginning to look a bit tight.

I did manage to print my novel today, in preparation for my final read-through and polish. Now that my cough has quietened down, I'll be able to read it aloud. My husband offered to read it for me (what a nice guy!), but I need to read it with my red pen at the ready, and it would be too cumbersome to pass the manuscript back and forth while he reads. Besides, my perpetually upset stomach probably would not let me read under optimal conditions.

The semi-finished novel is 92,000 words. I can't think of anything else I want to do with it. It really feels done, except for the tweaks I will undoubtedly make following this read-through. I've begun thinking about the next book in the series, but I'm not ready to start writing. I have my Neo loaded with some potential projects, such as my second fairy-tale retelling (an action-packed Snow White), my Christian thriller and my Hollywood romance.

We'll see what lights my fire.

4,700 Words!

My breakthrough from this morning resulted in a writing flood of 4,700 words! Do you have any idea how rare that is? Usually, I write that much in about a week! However, my daughter was unusually placid today, and I had much more time to write than usual. Oh, and I was able to re-include about 700 words that had previously been cut. (Never delete anything that you cut--that's my adage.) The changes are all fitting together so nicely, but of course it now requires that I reread and re-edit the entire thing.

I'm now over 80,000 words. I after going through it a time or two and retooling the ending, the finished novel will be about 90,000 words.