Monthly Archives: March 2011

So the book I’m working on now is a sci fi novel called The Counterfeit Emperor. The draft is complete, currently 50% of the way through its second round of revision. It’s around 110,000 words at the moment, will likely crest at about 120,000 as I add new scenes and details, then hopefully drop down again toward the end. The plan is to finish the current revision, do another quick pass for copyediting and other minor fixes (should lose at least a few thousand words there, just by tightening sentences) and then send it out to the beta readers again. If the feedback is positive, then I’ll tweak whatever needs tweaking and send it off. If not…well, we’ll see.

I said it’s 50% complete, and that means exactly 50%, not 51% or 49% – I’m tracking my progress by page count on a sort of “loading screen” progress bar taped to a kitchen cabinet. Just reached the 50 mark last night. What what!!

(Do people actually say “what what?” I started saying it as a joke and now I don’t even know what its deal is. How much of my lexicon now is strictly ironic?)

So. The state of the book is, uh, good. This is not my first try at a novel (nor – sshhh – my second), and I’ve been working on it longer than I’d care to admit, but I’ve got a good feeling. I’m making awesome progress, and the stuff I’m writing now is a lot better than anything I’ve written before. I think someday soon I’ll get to kick it out of the house so it can start earning its own way in the world…and then I can finally start something new!

…and this blog is an experiment.

I’ve done a couple of blogs before, about non-writing stuff, and the problem was always time. Blogs can be awful time sinks if you let them, and sooner or later, I always got to the point where the time costs outweighed the pleasures. So with this blog, I’m going to keep the posts short for the most part. That should help.

Another thing that should help is that I’m going to write about writing. Writing is something I care deeply about, and I hope that passion will fuel the blog.

(When did society reach the point where someone can write “passion will fuel the blog” and be serious about it? Anyhow…)

One thing I’m not willing to sacrifice is a consistent posting schedule. I want to update every weekday. Daily updates are good for my readers, and they’re good for me, too. If I didn’t have a consistent schedule, I wouldn’t update, and then the blog just becomes a bigger and bigger ball of guilt in the back of my brain.

And nobody wants that.

So – yeah. Blog about writing. Short posts, writing-centric, consistent updates. That about covers it for Day One.