urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:seanan_mcguire The Journal of Seanan McGuire Seanan McGuire 2009-11-24T04:53:25Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:seanan_mcguire:173702 2009-11-24T04:53:25Z 2009-11-24T04:53:25Z Ben Folds Five, "Video Killed the Radio Star." Current stats:<br /><br />Words: 7,137.<br />Total words: 85,301.<br />Reason for stopping: about midway through chapter twenty-two, totally exhausted.<br />Music: my evolving <i>Discount Armageddon</i> mix.<br />Lilly and Alice: asleep in my tank top drawer, being a puddle of blue and white fur.<br /><br />The speed with which this draft is suddenly materializing is a little scary, and is making me feel faintly hag-ridden. Seriously, there's "my normal writing speed," and then there's "writing to make a deadline," and then there's "holy Great Pumpkin in the sacred patch, where the hell did the day go?" Assuming this book comes out at exactly the estimate, I have fewer than 20,000 words left to go. Second draft will cut ten percent of that. (Actually second draft will cut twenty percent, but half of what I cut will be replaced by clarification, necessary bridgework, and general textual repairs. That's what second draft is <i>for</i>.)<br /><br />After this draft is done, I have to focus fully on <i>Blackout</i> and <i>The Brightest Fell</i> while my proofreading pool crawls all over the text and rips it into tiny bleeding shreds. (For Christmas this year, I'm getting a bloodbath! Just what I always wanted.) I figure I should have space on the docket to get into <i>Midnight Blue-light Special</i> sometime around May...you know, when I have the Guest of Honor slot and the book coming out. Gosh, it's fun to live inside my head sometimes, in the sense that apparently even I don't think I need to sleep. Sleep is for the weak and sickly, right?<br /><br />I am so in love with this book right now. I am so in love with this series right now. I am so in love with this <i>world</i> right now, with its reality shows and its cryptid-owned strip clubs and its many, many expeditions into the sewers of Manhattan. I can see where a second draft is going to be absolutely necessary, but right now? Right now, I am just enjoying the hell out of the ride.<br /><br />I can't wait for you to meet these people.