Word count -- ONE SALT SEA.: seanan

Word count -- ONE SALT SEA.

Words: 3,011.
Total words: 104,602.
Reason for stopping: bedtime!
Music: mostly the Counting Crows.
Lilly and Alice: glaring at me from their nest of pillows.

I feel like my word count needs a little explanation.

So when I had to throw out literally a hundred pages of this book, I didn't delete them all at once. Instead, I kept them at the back of the living manuscript, and every time I wrote X number of words, I would delete the same number from the text that was now considered "out of canon." This had two useful effects. First, it let me salvage certain things that I knew I wanted to keep, without leaving them as floating out-of-context fragments in a file somewhere. Secondly, it kept me from totally losing my shit, since suddenly going from "most of a book" to "a few chapters" is terrifying enough without your word count going back to zero.

All this is by way of explaining how I could have just written 3,000 words to wind up with a word count barely 600 words more than last night's word count. But more importantly, this is the real word count. I have finally deleted the last major chunks of the old book, leaving me with only those few scenes that I know I still need to re-incorporate. As of tonight, One Salt Sea is wholly and entirely itself, free of old identities and old ideas.

I'm both elated and terrified, because this really isn't the book I originally thought that I was writing. It's something better. It's almost the true sequel to Rosemary and Rue: it resolves a lot of the plot threads the first book left dangling, while introducing still more. It's a better book than I could have written two years ago. And it's still scary as hell.

But it's almost over. So I guess I better get used to the terror.

matociquala

October 26 2010, 12:33:35 UTC 6 years ago

New comment

You are mighty. That sucks.

mathnerd

October 26 2010, 13:45:04 UTC 6 years ago

Seanan is mighty and awesome, but you are amazing and witty and I stand in awe of your abilities Every Single Day. Even if I forget to say so. Mostly because I am scared to leave comments, because you're kind of intimidating. ;)

October 26 2010, 13:48:12 UTC 6 years ago

I'm really a very small bear. And I haven't eaten anybody in months.

Broccoli, though. I'm hell on broccoli. *g*

October 26 2010, 13:59:12 UTC 6 years ago

Spinach fears me. I decimate kilos within days. It's kind of embarrassing.

I'm getting into the writing thing, as a combination of letting the stories in my head out and needing stuff to do now that all my usual activities have been taken away from me due to disability. It's coming along.

PS I am in love with that icon. Is it gankable?