End of March Update...

It's strange having an update without a word count. But it's been a busy month and there's been a lot happening, so I wanted to maintain the end of the month progress reports. After finishing the first draft of 'Grey Sister' at the start of the month, I've been busy with proof reading and editing.

I've completely re-written the first two chapters (kill the darlings!), which was the biggest revision I wanted to get done. An author once told me that the first 50,000 words is just about the author finding their voice and that was definitely true about my first attempts at writing! I was a little worried, when I started to read through, to see how rough that first section was. Thankfully it didn't take the whole 50k for my voice to come out and about half way through Chapter 3 I was able to convince myself that, 'it's all right, I'm not so bad at this after all'. Surprisingly the Prologue, which was the very first thing I wrote, didn't seem so bad. I was actually surprised by how much I still liked it. Maybe it's just the emotional tie I have to that first piece of the book. Perhaps an impartial eye would see it differently. I'll just have to wait and see.

I've been working through the rest of the book as well to make the big and small amendments that came up in the read through. Reading through the book as a whole first definitely helped and I can see now how easy it is to get tunnel vision during proof reading. Because I viewed it at a wider scale, I could pick out missing pieces of information, flaws in characters' relationships and inconsistencies in tone and pace. But when it came time to focus in again, I was getting so lost in sentence-to-sentence level details that it would have been impossible to see those problems I could see during the read through. Thankfully I made plenty of notes.

My next deadline is the 29th April, my birthday, by which point I want to submit the manuscript of 'Grey Sister' to at least one agency (wheeeeeze). It's terrifying, but I'm so excited to be finally reaching the point of submission. I have an endless list of jobs to do before then, most important of which is going back over the Prologue and first two chapters to get them to the point of perfection, since those are the ones that go out to agencies before the full MS (though some agencies may ask for the complete work straight away). Then it'll be a matter of writing up a decent cover letter.

Lots of work to do! Busy month ahead.

Finished!

I... Oh gods, give me a moment. *Deep breath*

Ok, I'm alright. I'm good.

Right, OK, so.... I'm finished. Done. Complete.

I just wrote the final chapter of 'Grey Sister'.

For the past eight months, this has been my whole goal. Everything I've been working towards. A whole book, written from start to finish. And I've done it. I actually made it. I didn't give up half way or forget about it or move on to something else. I actually finished. And you know what?

It was easy. 

Don't get me wrong. It was hard. REALLY hard. Its been hours and hours, day after day, of work. I've not stopped thinking about writing for more than twenty minutes at a time. It's constantly on my mind, constantly wanting my attention. I've sacrificed a lot of hours that I could have been spending with friends or family or my boyfriend for it. I've put aside books I've wanted to read, stopped watching TV shows I loved, I've even cut down on my long, lovely soaks in the bath because The Book Always Comes First. I've kept working in a shop and put aside my career plans aside, passing up on job opportunities because I so wanted to do my best and try to achieve this one, stupid, outlandish dream.

The writing itself has been a huge learning curve, figuring out all the rules from scratch and working my way through plot holes and poor grammar and my constant desire to repeat the same basic writing techniques again and again (and again. See? There I go again with the triplication!)

But it's been fun. So fun. The best fun (Triplication again, dammit). Even though it was tough, writing has never actually felt like "work". I've never sat down to write and wished I could be doing something else. Even when I struggled to find the words or got stuck in a scene, I've constantly enjoyed the simple pleasure of writing.

While it has been a long time, it never really daunted me how far I still had to go. If it had been an university assignment, the idea that I would be working on it for the next who-knows how many months would have made me want to run and hide. But the only thing that's ever really scared me about writing has been finishing. Because next is the really hard bit and I'm equal parts excited and terrified to enter the publishing game.

I'm so happy that I've finally made it. I keep insisting that getting published is the main aim of all this, but actually writing a whole book has always been the biggest goal. If nothing else, even if 'Grey Sister' never comes to anything more than a series of files on my computer, I'm so glad I've done this.

So then, for one last time.

The word count, as of 9th March, 2014 is:

135, 917.

Eight months since starting. Prologue and twenty three chapters. 

Completed.

Now, where's my champagne? 

Phew!

With a rousing fanfare and a great big 'woohoo-for-me', I've made it to my story deadline. Yippee! 

It's been a long couple of weeks: seven-day working weeks and Christmas preparations do not make for the most conducive writing experience. And while that's definitely been reflected in my word count, I've managed to reach my plot point target with a whole 10 days to spare (I stopped writing just after midnight last night, but I'm counting that as the 15th). I'm pretty glad Me of the Past spent extra time writing last month. Having that big chunk of words behind me has really helped boost me forward to reach my goal. 

I'm now officially considering The Book half way done, which I think is a pretty big achievement (insert self-congratulatory back patting here). I honestly doubted I would make it this far without getting disheartened by my ambition or distracted by something easier or less time consuming. I'm really glad to see myself come so far since I started and it gives me confidence that I might really manage to write the whole book. 

I'll probably be giving writing a bit of a back seat for the last few busy days before Christmas. I've been editing chapters as I've finished them and I'm hoping to have everything so far at least a little more polished before the festivities begin. I might even let one or two particular people have a read.

That 100,000 word mark certainly is tempting though... and only about 10,000 words away. Hmm...