Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: accomplished
  • Music: REM, "Talk About the Passion."

Word count -- BLACKOUT.

Words: 7,639.
Total words: 142,065.
Estimated words remaining: 8,000.
Reason for stopping: I'm tired, and it's time for bed.
Music: really, really LOUD rock and roll.
Cats: Alice, eating; Lilly, loafing on the bed; Thomas, eating

On an average work night, I write between 2,000 and 4,000 words, along with assorted edits, emails, and the rest.

I have an estimated 8,000 words to go in this book. That is, essentially, two days of work. Now, I'm not actually going to finish Blackout on Wednesday; I have edits to process, and the first draft will almost certainly run 3,000 to 8,000 words long, giving me lots of room to go back and cut things that are repetitive or turn out not to be necessary. But I'll hit the point where everything becomes gravy sometime this week. Even with the event this weekend, even with Amy and Wes showing up on Friday, I'm almost there.

It's a weird feeling, sort of pride and terror all tangled up together. A lot of people are reserving judgement on the trilogy as a whole based on this book. If it's not good, they're going to be disappointed in me. So I have to stick this landing like it's the fucking Olympics, and I need to do it with style and grace. It's scary. It's amazing. It's the reason I write books, rather than sticking with stories that come out quicker and clearer and don't bleed on my floor quite as much.

We're almost there.
Tags: blackout, mira grant, word count
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  • 62 comments

paksenarrion2

June 7 2011, 06:08:56 UTC 6 years ago

I have confidence that Blackout will be awesome. Normally second parts of a trilogy are not quite as awesome as either parts one or three. Think Star Wars and the Indiana Jones series for example. Also think of the Star Trek movies-odd numbered ones were great, even numbered ones were just so-so. But Deadline was better than Feed-and Feed was great.

So is it next year yet?

seanan_mcguire

June 7 2011, 15:15:42 UTC 6 years ago

Thankfully, no.

spectralbovine

June 7 2011, 15:27:02 UTC 6 years ago

Think Star Wars and the Indiana Jones series for example.
Wait, really? I thought Empire Strikes Back was generally considered to be the best of the three.

paksenarrion2

June 7 2011, 18:21:41 UTC 6 years ago

I was speaking more from a personal perspective to be honest. Apart from the Ewoks, I found Return better than Empire. Obviously the vast majority of people don't agree with me *g*