Oh, good grief! I just realized that I haven’t exactly been keeping this up-to-date, have I? The last time I wrote a Wordcount Wednesday post, I was closing in on the finish line on my latest WIP and then…well, I never posted another update. And it’s been a month. Bad author, BAD!
So what finally happened? Well, like the very next day, I finished the manuscript. The first draft is complete at 129,022 words. That’s almost 30,000 words over the initial target that I had set for myself (I always seem to shoot for 100,000 words), but I’m not too overly concerned about it. The wordcount is going to fluctuate as I start to work on it.
So what’s going on with the project right now? It’s on the shelf. Literally.
There it is, right there. On a shelf.
Why would I do that? Because I’m in the cooling off period. I do this after I finish every writing project. I force myself to shelve whatever it is for at least a few weeks (I try to shoot for four, with varying degrees of success) so I can get some emotional distance and perspective on them. Even now, a month later, I’m still jazzed enough about finishing the story that I’m not sure I can look at it objectively. Plus, this is a busy time of year for us pastor-types, so I don’t really have the time to crack it open right now.
But at the end of the month, I will pull the book off the shelf, get out my trusty red pen, and start into it. I’ve got a collection of notes that I’ve been jotting down as ideas have occurred to me. I’ll start sifting through everything that was written and see what’s good and what needs to be fixed. One of the biggest projects I may tackle is changing the point of view. I wrote this in third person past tense, but I had this idea toward the end that it should be in first person present. That may still change; I’m currently reading a book that’s written in present tense and I’m finding that I don’t much like that tense in a story.
So there we go. In the meantime, I’m doing some brainstorming on a new writing project and mostly just trying to enjoy the holidays. I hope you have a good holiday season too. There will be more writing updates in the coming weeks, I promise!