May 20, 2008

Posted on | 3 years, 8 months ago, in the early evening | 2 Comments

Draft Zero for the west coast steampunk Victoriana book with zombies, air ships, toxic gas clouds, mad scientists, dead folk heroes, secret criminal societies, and Bonus! extended deleted scenes from the Civil War … has been achieved. Here are its stats:

Project: The Boneshaker
Total Word Count: 141,685 words
Goal: Met.





Observations: It’s way too long.
Goal for Draft One: Perhaps 125,000 words
Estimated Date for Draft One Delivery: June 1, possibly sooner
First Sentence: “She saw him, and she stopped on the second step from the bottom.”
Last Word: “go.”
Total Fiction Words Composed in 2008: 210,251

And now I’m going to do what I always do when I’ve just finished a project — stand around fidgeting, feeling like I ought to be doing something. But I need to set this down and let it cool off for a few days before I begin hacking it down to Draft One. This is not up for negotiation. I must impose distance, because if I try to clean it up too soon, I won’t do a very good job.

No, nobody gets to see Draft Zero.

It’s a strange and somewhat disconcerting feeling, being so suddenly finished with Part One of a book. It’s both liberating and unsettling, particularly with this novel — because Boneshaker is the last book for which I’m under contract. I have several more percolating in my head, yes; and I have three more books coming out in the next two years … but this is the last one I had to actually write.*

So I guess that’s the next thing in the queue: clean up sample work, establish outlines/proposals, and plot out what I’m going to work on next. I’ll get started on that this week, in between clearing up the Fathom pass revisions. And then, next week, it’s back to the Boneshaker until I have a clean enough draft that I can pass it along without fear of editorial reprisal.

[:: sigh of exhaustion ::]


* That ought to tell you something about how slowly the wheels of publishing turn.

Category: misc

Comments

2 Responses to “May 20, 2008”

  1. Cyndy
    May 21st, 2008 @ 5:18 am

    How spiffy! :)

  2. Jess Nevins
    May 21st, 2008 @ 8:39 am

    Yay! Congrats.

Leave a Reply





Bad Behavior has blocked 790 access attempts in the last 7 days.