January Closes...

As the month nears the close, I am excited to say my draft is nearing completion with less than 10K words to comb through to finish. I anticipate the next phases with its crackle of electricity better than the tingles of first love.

You could be a condescending prick that tells me I don't know what love is until I've blah-blah-blah, but generally my readers are pretty fucking amazing. PFA people, continue as planned. I can bet even serial killers enjoy bursts of overwhelming passion (and weird fear-boners) so overflowing emotion isn't the privilege of the pure and normal-ish.

My strength is slowly returning but I've a lot of sleep to catch up on. It's a freakish waking nightmare to sleep a good night's sleep, just to wake with your body so weak like you just laid down for sleep. What did we just do, body? I look around my room suspiciously, wondering if this is why nothing in my room is where I thought I put it. I'm betting I'm a sleep reorganizer but I'm not brave enough to see what a mess I am when I'm sleeping.

Rest assured, my friend Joe always reminds me he's got cameras hidden in my room somewhere. If he was great with computers, I'd double check my webcam. Insofar, he hasn't reported any weird nocturnal activities. 

I naturally clean the house at 3AM.

I love rereading my stories, thrilling at the new ideas that pop up as I get to know them better with the same words I've already written before. Another reason I like to stress the multiple edits--every time you revisit, you stage it a little differently and fill in more of the world blooming around it.

So! Back to finishing up this phase and back to building up my health. Now that I can chew on both sides of my mouth (I say with an overly proud tilt of my chin), I can finally gnaw on some crispy raw veggies, tree nuts, popcorn. As much as I love yogurt, I was in real danger of getting sick of it. Sugar free jello is out. But then again, I'm one of those weirdoes that loves lime jello best. You know, the kind you have to make yourself because it doesn't sell enough to be prepackaged.

Haters.

One of those Update Posts...

Occasionally, I like to jump in and 'double post' (essentially just posting a real-time post on a day where a scheduled post went through as well).

I do have quite a few posts coming up that I had a lot of fun with; I use color combinations to explain some of my characters, using the post topics in a way that is related to my first series with some of them. Hopefully, it shows off my voice a bit. It can be tough, since my fantasy voice isn't quite the same as my first-person blogging voice, but I'm always looking for ways to bring them together.

Premature picture, but my excitement beat me to it...

Today, I conquered one of those exciting milestone moments. My epic fantasy WIP/draft has passed the 200K word mark! There is still quite a ways to go to finish up UnSung (which is going to easily be the size of 3 regular full-length books), but I'm creeping towards the finish line. I'm bouncing between the epilogue and the third part. Since my epilogue leads me into the book I want to work on for NaNoWriMo, I'm trying to keep it fresh throughout the month while I plan to hit the ground running.

Although I was aiming for UnSung to come out this year, I can't promise that now. Namely because I really want to make sure I edit it to the best of my abilities rather than just throwing it out there. I know I have the ability to write and edit well, but since this one is so big, I really want to make sure the facts are locked down and the transitions are smooth as butter.

A lot had changed from the original plans in the book itself even. This tends to happen as a writer really crawls into the cracks and gets to know the world they're creating from top to bottom. 

Anyways, now that I completely my weekly writing goal by breaking the 200K mark, I'm due for some much needed sleep. Thank you for sharing this little moment with me. I'm aiming for at least another 40K to finish, but there are quite a few plots I'm still working on, so that may be surpassed.

Either way, I still plan on publishing this in the 5x8 size. In order to try to keep the cost down though, I'm going to work to make the font as small as possible without causing anyone eyestrain to read it. I've already reduced font size from my first books by 2 pts, but I can probably get away with reducing it by 4 more points in the print format. I'll probably still keep line spacing at 1.2 since that does help visibility regardless of font size. I'll experiment with it a bit. This really only applies to my print lovers, since the ebook version is always fully flexible with user settings.

What are your own writing goals these days? For the NaNo people, are you working to tie up current projects to start fresh or are you continuing something you're working on now?