September marks the month I started writing my book, tentatively entitled The Girl Who Ate the Poisoned Apple. I wouldn't take it seriously until mid November, during my high of writing another story for NANOWRIMO. Long story short, in two months I had written 130,000 plus words. That was a HUGE problem; there were only 14 chapters. Out of a possible 40. The average book is 50,000 to 70,000 words. Agents don't like 100,000 word books from first time authors.
So, I panicked and stopped working on it until April of this year and started a rewrite. This time, I had an outline ready and, although the chapters are still too many, I wasn't rambling on as I did in the first draft.
But I'm procrastinating. The method I used in writing the partial draft of the first book was to write at least 2,000 words a day. That's not working this time around. I've got eleven completed chapters and more to go. So far, I've been writing this book for a year. A bit embarrassing, considering it's a slice-of-life/ coming of age story.
Thus, this blog was born; to remind myself that I need to finish this story. I'm setting a deadline for myself-- as I should have done before --for November 30, 2010.
Because of a detailed outline, I'm confident that I can finish the rough draft, then take a breather before editing the hell out of it. All I have to do is to remind myself that the first draft is the skeleton, the bare bones. The meat comes from the edits and other drafts.
With that, I need to fix this blog. Make it more interesting... But I can't 'cause I have to go write.
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