Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Word count -- DEADLINE.

Words: 4,416.
Total words: 56,706.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter eleven. Time for horror movies.
Music: oddly enough, lots of show tunes.
Lilly and Alice: lounging.

I sort of hate to stop where I'm stopping, because Deadline is currently one hundred and ninety-six manuscript pages long, and two hundred pages is another of those super-exciting milestones that I so enjoy. Ah, well. I know that I'll be able to hit it in chapter twelve, and I didn't sleep well last night, so my eyes are sort of crossing now. Continuing to work would be counter-productive, and I shall instead conclude my labors in triumph. I like triumph. It tastes of spending the evening watching shitty horror movies and eating tomato sandwiches.

Pacing is always interesting in the Mason books, because I'm combining a very medical thriller/science fiction plot with, well, zombie apocalypse and massive violence. I need to both make sure the "let's talk about droplet-based transmission" scenes don't dominate the book, and also make sure that I'm not writing a Michael Bay movie. (Not that there's anything wrong with Michael Bay. It's just that if I'm going to write a movie, I'd rather write a James Gunn movie, or maybe a John Carpenter movie. One of the good ones. Not Vampires.) It's a very delicate balance, and it sometimes takes me a little while to find my flow in a given chapter. Well, tonight, the flow was on.

Before it sounds like I'm getting too cocky, remember that the final manuscript for Feed came in at 145,000 words, roughly. So I'm only barely a third of the way there. And that's a good thing, because oh...

...you ain't seen nothing yet.
Tags: deadline, word count, zombies
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  • 6 comments
How does a manuscript page translate into a paperback page?
I'm not one hundred percent sure. Not the most helpful answer ever, I know, but it's what I have.

The .doc version of Rosemary and Rue is 333 pages, without the dedication or acknowledgments. The book version is 368 pages, with the dedication and acknowledgments. So I'm going to say it's slightly more than one to one, with the final printed book coming out longer.