Sunday, February 14, 2010

Lining Up For The Next Lap ...

Journal of the Dead first draft: 114,181 words
Journal of the Dead second draft: 111,992 words
Journal of the Dead third draft: 110,394 words

I just hit that fantastic final sentence again. Now it's time to let the whole thing set again, with the plan to look at it seriously for what I hope will be the final pass. I'm tentatively planning to start that on March 15th. Oh, yeah, that's ominous.

Going to take a little break before I think about having other eyes look at it, but that's probably on the horizon. Maybe. The sample chapter section for certain. I haven't had a beta reader since I was thirteen (or so), in case people are wondering why I'm so skittish about the idea.

4 comments:

Aubrie said...

Don't worry, I'm really nice :)

What re you skittish about, exactly?

And congrats on finishing another edit round! If the word count is more concise, that's a good thing.

Lindsey Duncan said...

My draft style is bloated - I just seem to use a lot of unnecessary words. In short stories, I cut deeply; with novels, I try to preserve the occasional "that" or stutter. ;-) So invariably, even if I'm adding significantly to the story, my novel drafts will shorten as I edit.

Just putting up short stories for critique ties me in knots. The thought of having someone look at an entire novel is daunting. I suppose this boils down to "my skin is too thin." ;-)

Aubrie said...

That's very interesting, because as musicians we have to have such a hard skin. Every lesson your teacher is criticizing you to make you better. I think this has helped me with dealing with the comments about my writing.

Lindsey Duncan said...

My musical skin is thicker, really. I even spent some time on the competition circuit, which while I think it's more casual in the SHSA than it is for classical musicians, is still not an easy ride for the ego. ;-)

I don't know. I've actually gotten quite good at filtering comments - "That makes sense, that's garbage, I don't know about that, we'll see if anyone else agrees." - but the process remains nerveracking.

Also I think the complete lack of knowing what to expect might have something to do with it. ;-)