I’ve received some negative feedback about my portrayal of the romance between Geraden and Allonna. That’s something I will probably have to go back and substantially rework later; for now, I’ll just continue the way its going, to keep it consistent within the first draft.
With what I’ve written this morning, I have now added more words to my novel over the past 52 days than in all of 2002 and 2003 combined.
In terms of word count, So far today has been my second most productive day of writing since I started my sprint to the finish. Depending on how exciting the BYU game is, I could get even more done this evening.
And I’ve passed over the 90,000-word mark.
I’ve updated my progress bar at the top of the page to include the extra 20,000 words I think I’m going to need, and my new target date of finishing just before Thanksgiving.
Those of you who are paying close attention may have noticed that the word counter showing my novel progress has been stuck at 88,751 for several days.
This does not mean I have writers’ block. It just means that I decided to take a short break from working on the novel. Since there’s no way I’m actually going to finish by the deadline I had set, I decided I could afford to.
That does not mean I have not been busy with my writing. Over the past few days, I have done the following:
1. Made the necessary final revisions for “Resonance,” and mailed them off to Analog today.
2. Polished up three flash stories (stories under 1000 words) and submitted them to Abyss and Apex webzine.
3. Made revisions to “Salt of Judas,” the story I wrote at the Writers of the Future workshop, and submitted it to Realms of Fantasy magazine.
4. Made revisions to “The First Ambassador” and got it ready to mail off to Analog tomorrow.
So tomorrow I will have five stories submitted to markets, which is the most I’ve ever had out at once. And I will return to working on the novel.
No, that’s not a typo in the title. BYU lost, the Dallas Cowboys lost, and my fantasy football team lost. I can’t even say, “Well, one out of three ain’t bad,” even though one out of three is bad.
After I arrived home from watching the BYU game at grandfather’s, I got my mail. I saw that my SASE had returned from Analog, and I prepared myself for rejection, because I’d heard that when Analog accepts something, they send out a contract that won’t fit in a normal envelope.
To my great delight, though, the editor said that he wanted a few more tiny changes, but that he was ordering up a contract, counting on me to make the changes quickly.
So I’ve achieved one of my writing ambitions: to sell a story to Analog. Analog used to be named Astounding Science Fiction, and many of the SF stories I grew up reading, by Asimov, Heinlein and others, were published in that magazine.
