Day: February 4, 2013

Novel #2 Progress: Back to Work!

Standard

The Inconsiderate Virus is still holding on by a thread, but my muse and I decided to ignore its efforts to knock me down for another week.  Work on Novel #2 continues at a steady pace even as I work through some scenes that need a lot of work both in terms of story flow and grammar gremlins.

Word Count Progress:

Draft #1 Word Count:

  • Start Word Count: 39,221
  • End Word Count: 41,548
  • Total: 2,327

Draft #2 Revised Word Count:

  • Start Word Count: 40,378
  • End Word Count: 42,761
  • Total: 2,383

Writing Process Notes:

  • This week I completed the next chunk of five chapters for which my beta reader is anxious to receive. I can’t even begin to explain how motivating it is to have someone excited to read the next segment of the story. Perhaps, this is the key to staying on track with editing. I don’t want to make her wait too long and I love getting feedback while in the midst of the revision process. It’s a lot easier to make changes when I haven’t wandered too far away from a section that might need to be fixed.
  • Call me overly optimistic, but I started researching possible agents to query. I found a few that could be a perfect fit, so I’m eager to yank out that query letter draft and polish it further.

Novel Tidbit:

Term usage and invention:

  • Part of the fun of writing urban fantasy/re-imagined mythology is the freedom that comes with redefining common words and inventing new terms to describe elements in the story that do not exist in the real world. Because Ian isn’t quite human, I had to reach back into history to discover the origins his kind. My research took me into some well-tread areas of myth, but then I stumbled across one sentence in an ancient text that offered a golden opportunity to create an entirely new world.
  • Without giving too much away, I can share some of the words I’ve changed (i.e. turning common nouns into proper nouns) or invented as a means to describe Ian’s realm:
    • Wake
    • Block
    • Call or Calling (depending on how it’s used)
    • Unseen
    • Oathmark
    • Lineage Mark
    • Summoner Mark

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c.b.w. 2013