Friday, February 24, 2006

let's go around the table

Completed Sunday, December 04, 2005: 179 pages. 36, 293 words. 32 chapters.

My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, a novella in four parts and an epilogue.

Completed Friday, February 24, 2006: 201 pages. 38, 669 words. Still 32 chapters.

My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, still a novella in four parts, but now with a prologue, interludes, and one whole new character-well, partially. It's someone who's mentioned in most of the previous versions but we've never "seen" them before.

I might be dismayed that I'm still more than a thousand words shy of a novel, but I choose to see it as reinforcement that I'm not padding the story out just to meet a word count. Everything I've added I've added for one reason and one reason only: Because I saw it.

Besides, this is a process, and as long as I keep discovering things that tell me about Keitha and Colley and Annabel, it's an ongoing process that I'm committed to. (Yeah, like I have a choice.)

And I kind of knew this was going to have to go through the old Microsoft Word at least one more time.

I also cut a few lines, and the entire epilogue from the last version, on the grounds of what was I thinking?

I'll be asking some of you to read the new draft soon, so now's the time to check that your spam filters are in place.

3 comments:

jeopardygirl said...

One thing I learned with NaNoWriMo: don't sweat the word count. Just write. I'm sure it's great, Ben.

Ben Varkentine said...

It's definitely not great yet, but it's not despicable either.

jeopardygirl said...

Well, as you said, it's a work in progress. The first draft was enjoyable, I'm sure any changes you've made have only enhanced it. Hope I get to read it.