The Secret History

Ladies and Gentlemen, the first draft of Crisse, des Zombies! is done!

Readers who have been following the story as it unfolded here must be warned that I won't be posting the end in this LJ. In fact, much of the end has changed, and a few parts that are in this LJ have been mercilessly hacked out of the final edit.

I have had to change the structure of the novel somewhat as well, and there were numerous cosmetic and language changes that took place. I had to kill many of my darlings, but such is the price one has to pay for one's art.


Total number of words:

102,490 / 102,490 (100.0%)

Total number of words hacked away in the end: 5,682

It had to be done, but it wasn't pretty.


So tonight I will pat myself on the back, save the document in a format that I hope people can read, and leave it in the hands of my brilliant beta readers. Then I will make a stir-fry and celebrate with liquor.

Also: I need a new title, one that isn't tongue-in-cheek. I love my titles, I do, but they don't fit the tone of the book at all.

Suggestions?

Dear readers,

Thank you for your unwavering loyalty. I am not dead, and I will, I promise, be updating with new episodes of Beyond the Pale, Conflation, and Crisse, des Zombies! (Zombie Crisis!) as soon as humanly possible.

Writing is a momentum-based activity. Once I sort out the new job/new schedule woes and start writing again, you will get back-to-back instalments of everything. Many thanks for your forbearance on this matter. I am currently working out some plot kinks in Crisse, des Zombies! (Zombie Crisis!) and hope to have them resolved shortly.

What a ride it's been this year! Holy cow!

My apologies for the spam today. Since I last posted I think I wrote about 20,000 more words, and while I toyed with the idea of just posting a few at a time over the next few days, I decided not to in the end. I'm starting a new job on Monday, and so I want to leave nothing to chance.

In a final, desperate, last-ditch sprint to the finish line today, I produced a little under 10,000 words (many thanks to everyone who cheered me on, especially tcaptain who came to my mini writing-jam today at Central Station to be my personal cheering squad, and who got an extra two or three thousand words out of the exercise himself!), and hit 100,000 words just before 7pm.

I am quite pleased. The novel is not quite finished. I estimate another 20,000 words or so before I can properly wrap it up. Also, the last section is going to need a lot of revision. I'm not nearly as happy with it as I was with the first two, for reasons which I know and understand. I'm going to finish it up, let it sit idle for a week or so, and then come back and do some major re-working. I already think I know how I can "fix" what's wrong with it, or at least what I find unsatisfactory. Please feel free to prod me if you don't see me adding to the novel in the next week to ten days. I really want to finish this one. I think it's a keeper.

Right now, though, I'm going to rest on my laurels for a little bit, and bask in the glory of having written mad amounts of words this month. Again, my thanks to my beloved readers and all the other NaNo participants who cheered me on from the very start and kept an eye on my sanity at the same time. Many, many thanks. You guys are all awesome.

And now, for the wordcount meter, purple just for today in honour of NaNoWriMo (okay, the site claims it's pink, but it looks purple to me, and that's good enough):

100,035 / 120,000 (83.4%)