598

Deleted 1100 but I'm still up by 598.

I'm feeling good about this now.  Of course, it's 5 a.m. and I'm always an optimist first thing in the morning.  There is one enormous plot hole that needs to be worked, but the characters just fell into place.

Off to the gym.

1648

I've finally written more than I've deleted and almost enough for the NaNoWriMo requirement of words per day.  Yesterday I wrote 1648 of new material.

It's coming along.  I was horribly stuck and so changed my pov.  I'm not sure if I will keep it for the final but with the enormous cast of characters in this book, it is helpful.

Two Unrelated Things

Well, I've hit the bottom of the deletion cycle, I think.  I wrote 500 words today beyond what I deleted.  There is still a lot to get rid of, but the character arcs have tightened somewhat.  I feel so insecure about this book.  I don't know who this dude is sometimes!

Also, I read a blog post somewhere in which an author complained about authors who talk about politics.  Now, I am one of those people who believes that the personal is political.  That you really can't separate the two.  But I appreciate that my readers may not want to hear my diatribes. 

Those of you who feel that way should probably stop reading now.

The GOP made a fatal mistake this election.  They did not LOOK at the American people.  They looked at the fantasy in their heads in which the vast majority of Americans are white protestants, who hate immigrants, intellectuals, liberated women, foreigners, homosexuals and any race not their own.  And now they will have to wake the Ef up or there will be no Republican party in the future.

Maybe the Green party will be the next challenger?  I could go for that.

Thank God.

Writing backwards

Yesterday I 'fixed' a chapter.  Which means I wrote 1000 words more or less, but deleted about 1800.  I'm down 685.  I don't know if it's better or worse, but at least I'm working on it.

word count

Yesterday was a miserable writing day.  Wrote only 500 and deleted 900.  So I'm down 400.  Today I am approaching the problem area.  If I can just work this part out I might start making some progress.

Day Two

Yesterday I wrote 1200 words and deleted 900, so I'm at 300.  So sad, but that's how it goes.

I may have mentioned 'If Not for You' some time ago, when I first started it.  I sometimes start books and finish them years later.  This one is about a wheeling dealing stockbroker, Eric Tack, living in San Francisco, who is trying to recover from the crash of 2008.  He hears that the man he loved and lost has been murdered and that he, Eric, has been named in the man's will. 

The entire book takes place in Humboldt County, up in the Redwood National Forest, where so many grow houses, legal and illegal, exist.  I got stuck on one of the main character's personalities.  I couldn't seem to nail him down which, you can imagine, created a major problem.  I've written the beginning and the end.  I'm kind of flopping around in the middle trying to get a grip.

NaNoWriMo

I've never done it but it seems like it might be the kick in the butt I need, so I'm going to do the NaNoWriMo on 'If Not for You' this month.

Today is my first day.  The book is 62,638 words currently, and I don't expect to publish more than 90,000 but if you knew my process you would weep for me.  This is the point in my novels where I start savagely brutalizing my story.  Cutting out characters, scenes, chapters.  For every word I write, I delete at least another word somewhere else.  So.  If I can write 50,000 and delete 20,000 I should be doing well.

I'll blog about the journey.  It will probably be boring.  Day after day of:  wrote 1200, deleted 1200, but I am going to finish this book and I'm going to be happy with it when it's done!