Mondays

Do. Not. WANT!

Argh! I am such a fan of sleeping in, but getting jolted awake at 6am is pretty much the opposite of that. I know that happens five days out of the week, but I have a special resentment reserved for Monday mornings. My alarm blaring Everything Is Awesome might not have been the best song choice in retrospect. Oy.

Now, I have heard of these fabled morning people that thrive during the dawning of a new day, but I have yet to meet one. My question is, do you actually exist, or have you gone the way of the unicorn? Have the grumpy-grumps strangled you all? I figure that would be my first reaction to meeting a morning person, especially if it was prior to 10am. I need to hang a sign on my door that reads Come back at noon. I know there are already tons of jokes and quips out there regarding stuff like this and "morning coffee," but that's because they're true. Yet, it's late afternoon and I'm still yawning. Oh well.

But, I didn't come here just to bitch about Mondays, although I could go on and on... No? Okay, moving on then.

I actually came here to give you some cold hard stats on the creation of After - Part Three. (cheer!) A long, long time ago, when I started the editing process, I based my timeline off the previous two books. Over the months that followed, I discovered my folly since After - Part Three was not written the same way as the others. I wrote most of the back half of it using Dragon Naturally Speaking, a nifty little text to speech program that is correct at least 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time leads to a quagmire of confusion that is neither time-efficient nor productive, although amusing at times.

Ehe... Oops.

So when you're speaking off the top of your head, and just yammering and yammering, you do get a lot of words down, if that's your goal. A first draft getting created this way is not a bad thing, but pretty much the whole thing will need to be rewritten, and I mean COMPLETELY rewritten. Nothing good is going to come out of that first draft. It's only a little better than an outline as far as I'm concerned. I did not take this aspect into my equation when I calculated the time it would take to finish.

I remember opening up the draft for part three and being somewhat disappointed that it was just under 50000 words... probably about the same size at part one. Part two came in over 70000, and I really thought the final chapters of After would top out a little higher than that. Boy, was I wrong.

Or was I?

I'm not going to skimp on my book just because I could stamp it and call it a day. My manuscript will get the full attention it deserves until I'm satisfied with the story I've told. That means some chapters need shuffled, some scenes cut, some scenes added, some perspectives changed, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears shed by moi. Well, maybe not the blood part, (unless you want to count the papercuts) but still, you get it.

So I dove in and really started chewing it up. And aren't you curious as to where I stand now?

After - Part Three is roughly at 86,000 words.

Zoh. My. Gosh!!

Looking at it that way kinda boggled my mind. It wasn't my focus during the rewrites, but one day, I decided to compile everything and got quite the surprise. The whole manuscript of After is sitting just over 211,000 words right now. Um... Did I do that?

I never expected this first book to turn out to be so many words. I was thinking I'd be lucky to hit even 100k. Actually, there are a lot of things I didn't expect to happen with this first book. I guess the biggest thing that's blown me away is all the fans, followers, and supporters I've gained. I love you guys! You are all so wonderful, and I hope to be able to get through the remaining 20k words of part three, and have this book out to y'all by the end of the month!

Happy.. uh... Monday, and I hope the rest of your week just keeps getting better from here!