Hi Folks,
Okay. I thought the novel was done, but I just wasn’t happy with the ending. I knew it wasn’t “right” but I wasn’t sure why.
So I scrapped some stuff (not a lot), wrote some new stuff, and now it’s good.
By the way, ALL of this that I’ve been doing for the past 21 months is because I am an adherent of Heinlein’s Rules. If you want to hike up your productivity as a writer (write more and write better), follow Heinlein’s Rules. More on this toward the end of this post.
Turned out the novel needed one more scene as well, and a completely different resolution. So this one took 15 days instead of 14 days. I’m not complaining. (grin)
The Day
Rolled out right at 3 this morning. My subconsicous already was firing on all cylinders. It had worked out the right ending and resolution for the novel as I slept. Excellent.
For those of you who like “process,” at least for an individual novel, over the course of this novel, I initially cut (threw away, deleted) 11,410 words. It just wasn’t right. Will some of that someday end up in another novel or short stories? Maybe. I threw it away, but it still came out of my head. So it can come out again. And it wasn’t “wasted” because it got me, eventually, to where I am today on this book.
Then I started over. I typed the title, hit the Enter key a couple times, typed the first word and kept going.
I took a few wrong turns along the way, and later recognized only a couple of those were truly wrong turns. I sometimes had trouble shutting out my consicous, critical mind. But that’s all right too. It’s all a learning process. It’s a series of lessons.
In the end (or “when the smoke cleared,” since this was a western), I wrote 44,998 words of new fiction. (That does not include the 11,410 words I threw out at the beginning.)
Of those 44,998 words, I deleted some scenes that seemed to me separate of the actual storyline of this novel. So the final novel that’s going to publication later today is 40,365 words. There you go. The full accounting. (grin) This is the most extra words I’ve ever written. The fewest extra words were 14.
When I finished the novel and the spell check, I came here to do this. Now it’s almost 9 a.m. I’m going to prepare a cover, do the formatting, and get this puppy Out There. I plan to write a short story later today, and at least part of tomorrow I hope to spend putting together a boxed set of the nine novels in the Wes Crowley saga. This was the final novel in that series.
Okay, now it’s almost 12:30. I’ve done all of the above plus published The Scent of Acacias to D2D, Smashwords and Amazon. I also created a new page for it on StoneThread Publishing and updated the Wes Crowley Saga page there. I think that’s all I have to do for now. Oh, I also recorded it on my Fiction spreadsheet.
I don’t remember whether I’ve talked about that before. I believe in keeping good records. Not doing so can bite you in the whatsit down the line.
In the first section of my fiction spreadsheet, it has the title and author of each work, which collection it’s in (for short stories), the publication date, word count, ebook price, page count, and print price. In the next section it has the buy link (URL for the book page) for Smashwords, Amazon, Apple, Kobo, B&N and CreateSpace. (The books are available in over 1400 separate venues now, but those are the biggies.) In the third section it has the ISBNs for D2D, Pronoun (not going yet), Smashwords, XinXii and CreateSpace. This gives me a ready tool I can use to tell anyone at any time where they can purchase the title from the retailer of their choice. I use it more often than you might think.
By the way, I just glanced at Dean’s site. The introduction to his Heinlein’s Rules lecture is at http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/heinleins-rules-introduction/. I recommend following him for awhile even if you don’t follow him all the time. He also has another good post there today called Learning is Attitude.
Today’s Writing
Less than halfway through my first mugga coffee, I started writing. That was about 3:30 a.m.
Now, less than 4 hours later, I hit three short sessions (and two short breaks and one long break) for a total of 2091 new words. And the novel is finished. And the ending and resolution are exactly right.
And I meant to do more today (as I mentioned earlier), but I just didn’t. I’m gonna post this, and then I’m gonna prep a cover and publish the short story I put together yesterday.
Fiction Words: 2091
Writing of The Scent of Acacias (Book 9 in the Wes Crowley saga)
Day 1…… 3887 words. Total words to date…… 3887 words
Day 2…… 3092 words. Total words to date…… 6979 words
Day 3…… 3365 words. Total words to date…… 10344 words
Day 4…… 3077 words. Total words to date…… 13421 words
Day 5…… 4486 words. Total words to date…… 17907 words
Day 6…… 3739 words. Total words to date…… 21646 words
Day 7…… 1471 words. Total words to date…… 23117 words
Day 8…… 2843 words. Total words to date…… 25960 words
Day 9…… 1782 words. Total words to date…… 27742 words
Day 10… 3315 words. Total words to date…… 31057 words
Day 11… 4196 words. Total words to date…… 35253 words
Day 12… 1290 words. Total words to date…… 36543 words
Day 13… 3224 words. Total words to date…… 39767 words
Day 14… 3140 words. Total words to date…… 42907 words
Day 15… 2091 words. Total words to date…… 44998 words (NOW it’s done)
Total fiction words for the month……… 24043
Total fiction words for the year………… 628035