Oh, the loneliness! The loneliness!

[desperance]

It's Tuesday, noon-ish, and I have decided: race or no race, the midday posting of total week's wordage will continue.

The trouble is, of course, that after a month's hectic head-to-head, driving each other furiously on, I am suddenly faced with this last lap to run alone, with no one to pace me. I have slackened. Not slacked, exactly - I have been away during this week, and yesterday was set up from the start to be a lost cause workwise - but nevertheless. It's taken a mad surge this morning to get me past 10,000 words for the week.

Here are the numbers: I've actually written 10,136 words this week, or 34 pages, which gives us

112,132 / 90,000 (124.6%)

Or, in my preferred page-count mode:

350 / 300 (116.7%)

Which only goes to prove how very, very bad I am at estimating how long a book is going to be. I may have mentioned this before; we live by Brenchley's Rules in this house, and Brenchley's First Rule of Everything is that Everything Takes Longer.

Still'n'all, the good news is that this last canter, the home straight is actually briefer than I'd anticipated. Maybe I'm skimping; someone else will have to tell me. I have nothing left to write now but the post-climax recovery, and the twist. I could do all that today. I might yet. I might not; I have to go to the theatre this evening, which might disrupt the afternoon. Either way, I don't really care. We're there, or thereabouts. Just a few hours' work remaining.

I had vaguely hoped to go apeshit in September, and write a novel in a month (3000 words a day, for thirty days - that's where the 90,000 target came from). As it went, I didn't really get started till mid-September, and the bulk of the work was done in October, and it still didn't get finished till now or nowabouts. Still, a couple of months' work is not bad, for a novel. The real question is whether it is conspicuously worse than those books I've sweated over for a year or more. Again, that'll be someone else's judgement. Me, I just blow the wind through the trombone. And other inappropriate metaphors.

Comments

[davidbarnett.livejournal.com]

Yay, I was hoping you'd post. I'm quite missing the Tuesday round up. Sounds like you've beaten it into submission; if it's any consolation, I e-mailed my first draft to JJ last week but he still hasn't read it because he's still offline. So I guess it's still all to play for, really, if it comes down to who he reads first...

Don't forget the winner's prize of getting to read the other ms and the loser's forfeit of having to read the other ms...

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Quite frankly, I want to read both MS's. It must be really quite difficult to be on tenterhooks waiting for John to read it and tell you if what you've slaved over for ages is actually worthwhile. It's bad enough when it's just friends (although, admittedly, that does include Chaz and shewhomust who are both very good with the editorial) reading it, it must be several times worse when it's your agent.

Oh, and excellent work Chaz, keep it up, etc.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Aye, but poor John has Troubles Of His Own just now - looks like he's about to move out of his third flat this year, before the broadband's even caught up with his previous move. Being quick on your feet is a good thing in an agent, but this is extreme...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Prizes and forfeits are not forgotten. Do we get to do a quick read-through/redraft first, or should we shamefacedly expose our very rawest efforts...?

[davidbarnett.livejournal.com]

I'd vote for rough and ready. Then we can perhaps procure a little bit of sneaky copy-editing as well...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Cool, I'm up for that. Send it through as soon as you like: chaz at chazbrenchley tod co dto uk (oh, don't we have fun, disguising our e-dresses from spamming spiders?) will always find me in. And I can read pretty much any document format, on account of being a passionate Linux user.