First, I want you all to go here and see the amazing trailer for BORN WICKED, premiered exclusively through Entertainment Weekly. It's pretty much the awesomest thing ever (er, after the book, of course!).

Next I want to talk a little about ACCURSED (& etc.), mainly cause I've still been feeling a little down on myself about not doing enough last year.`

I started ACCURSED at the end of 2009. In my records for December 10, 2009 it's called "Something New." Later I retitled to "Quents" (a level of Curse-working in the book) & then finally changed it to "Accursed". Which means I have worked with Gen & her story (and potential later-story stuff, for now just to give her a place to go when I can't get her voice out of my head) for about two years & one month.

In those 764 days I wrote ~363454 words about Genevieve. (First draft, edits, plotting notes & randomness)

That is approximately 1454 pages.

Or about 476 words per day since she first said "I wish..."

In five revisions, plus random "outside the story" scenes.

So I guess I can cut myself a bit of slack in feeling like I did nothing in 2011, especially considering I...

Wrote nearly 106000 words in/about Darlington.

Did just over 35000 words of critique (quite a bit of it on the book in the above trailer! Eee!)

Added nearly 21000 words to Arion's (The Ties of Blood) world.

Agonized over 14000 words of "pitch material" (i. e. query, synopsis, etc)

Played with nearly 12000 words on the new alt-word futuristic historical mystery (with bonus!magic)

Managed about 4500 words in random pieces.

Found nearly 2200 more words for the Haunted Restaurant Cinderella

And wrote just over 1300 words in the Angel/Immortal piece that's going to be super-difficult for me.

(Also, there was a pitiful 299 words in W&F world, but that story/series is going to have to wait until I know how to fix it.)

So while I didn't get to write as much as I wanted in 2011, apparently I still wrote quite a bit :)

Have I mentioned how much this book does not want to be written in order? *headdesk*

Anyway, I got a good chunk of a scene down tonight-- it will probably be cut way down for insertion into the actual manuscript, but I'm fine with it meandering for now. Especially knowing it's just a "scene" and not a "chapter"-- for some reason that makes a big difference in what I feel I can let myself do. Plus I feel like it's attempting to tell me something pretty important about the story, so I'm going with it.

Today's work brings my total words for June to 37,916*

I kinda want to throw myself at July. My usual goal is 30,000 words/month (with some exceptions), so I kinda want to up that, but I also don't want to make myself insane. So... Let's try for 40,000 in July, shall we? Or, how about 40,000 words or the end of the manuscript**, whichever comes first?

Sounds like fun to me! :)

Oh, and thanks for the comments on yesterday's friend-locked Teaser Tuesday :) I'm glad y'all like Gen-- she's a trip

*Not counting LJ or diary entries.

**Still keeping to the regular 30,000 goal as well.

I set a number of goals for myself back in January. I put thought into them. I tried to make them uncomfortable but within my grasp if I worked hard enough.

One of these goals was to write 30,000 words* a month. My breakdown so far:

January: 36,753

February: 33,150

March: 32,319

April: 35,126

And then I got to May. My count so far this month? 4702 (not counting today). This is less than my highest single-day count this year (4818).

Needless to say, I'm a little disappointed. But I know why it's so low.

I've restarted my agent search, so some days I've been re-researching all the agents I looked at before, and a few new ones-- this mostly involves printing pages/highlighting them. Some days are spent exclusively combing through my manuscript looking for typos (low word count, very time consuming). And some days are spent working on my query blurb/synopsis (also low word count).

What I'm doing right now is important. And I know that. But when I look at my spreadsheet, I feel like I've been doing nothing.

So I think this particular goal might need a little editing. 30,000 words/month is a goal I want to achieve, no doubt about it. But I need to allow myself to let go of the word count when I'm editing and querying. And who knows, I might still bump up the words and hit my goal this month (especially if I nail this synopsis sooner rather than later). Stranger things have happened. But for now I have to be okay with where I am.

So, new goals:

30,000 words/month when actively writing/plotting/revising

20,000 words/month when mostly editing and querying

20,000 means I still need to pump up my daily counts by a few hundred words. It means I have to push myself a little harder than I have been the last week or so. But it's also going to keep me from going crazy with writer-guilt or writing gibberish just to hit my count.

*I count all writing-related words, except blogging and word-count record-keeping.

So, this year I decided to unofficially attempt NaNoWriMo and try to write 50,000 words in November-- not to get into a new story, but to push through my revision of W&F1.

And I did. I finished off the revision at 46,467 words for November. Then I started W&F2 (briefly) and have since gone into working on WSSD (formerly Mordagrin). I hit 50,000 words for the month on Thursday and kept writing. Actually, a few hundred more words and I'd have hit 60,000.

I didn't go into this thinking I needed a 'challenge' but I did. Even though I'd been writing every day, I was getting complacent about hitting a few hundred words and stopping. "Oh, that scene's done? I'll stop now" or "Eh, I don't know what comes next, I'll work on it tomorrow."

Sometimes that's what's needed. But mostly, it's not. I know me. I know I get can get lazy. And while everyone needs a break sometimes, I think the last couple months I was giving myself way too much leeway. I needed a kick in the pants, and NaNo did that.

I'm not going to let that momentum drop, though. I've set my December goal at 40,000 words, and getting at least halfway through WSSD. I'll revise those if needed, but for now? Pushing through.

I found Grover. :)

As I started editing the last chapter, iTunes started playing "Miracles Happen." Apparently iTunes had no faith in me until this point.

As I entered the last wordcounts into my spreadsheet, iTunes shuffled to "Beautiful Disaster." Good iTunes *pats computer*

Pre-Last-Read-Through Word Count? 107,228.

I lost 21,469 words from Draft 3 to Draft 4. Final-final WC might change after my D4.2 read-through, but... wow. I lost a novella.

Now to go ice my wrists because omg the pain!

Yes, about that word count... It is now SHORTER!

Today I cut a section that did nothing but amuse me. Yes, I like Arion being snarky to Isis's mother (who totally deserves it). No, it had nothing to do with anything else. So out it went. And now?

My word count is just a hair over 113000!

Yeah, I know, I know, it's still "long for a YA" but it is a fantasy, and now it's shorter than Twilight!

I feel like I was just sitting here poking at the mass of a scene with a stick most of the day, expecting it to do something it just wasn't going to do. Once I actually hit delete, I still had to find a way to connect the beginning and the end of the chapter, but that didn't require nearly as many acrobatics as I'd expected. And I doubt anyone will notice the little patch that puts the pieces together (unless they've read a previous draft and are looking for it!).

I'm not sure if I'll actually get any more revision done tonight, but I'm very excited! Only 10 more chapters before my final read-through, then off to betas and querying! (And writing Mordagrin and revising Wings & Fangs: Bewitched and writing Wings & Fangs: Taken and...and...and... *grin*)

Haven't done this in a while, so here goes...

Wings and Fangs: Bewitched (draft one) tops out at...

113,500 / 100,000 (113.5%)

Yeah, I need to get to revising this, though I think it will probably wind up somewhere around 105000 to 110000 in the final draft.

Wings and Fangs 2 (no subtitle yet) has hit...

13,800 / 100,000 (13.8%)

And none of that is actually, ummm... structured. No chapters, all 'scenes.' Yeah. I should probably get to work on that.

Mordagrin is now up to...

27,200 / 100,000 (27.2%)

And only 10600 of that is in chapter format...

So I've been getting quite a bit done, but I really need to prioritize what I'm doing. I need to finish up my thesis paper, query letters, and submission packet. I need to get to revising W&F 1 to tighten that up. And I really need to clean the house... :)

ETA: PSA- Like amieroserotruck, I hope LJ hangs around, but just in case, I do have a blogspot account already that I just kind-of ignore now. So if anything happens, you can find me here: http://kathleenfoucart.blogspot.com)

Books Purchased: 9 (half-price sale at my favorite used book store!)

Books Finished Reading: 1

Words Written: 1900

I think that's a decent start to the year :)

Around 3200 words (not counting random emails and such) later and my wrists hurt and I'm still not done with this darn story, but I think I've got 3 more chapters to go. Not positive on that number, but that's what it's looking like from where I am in the story right now.

Of course I've also spent about 3 hours on the phone with b today, discussing the end of the story and book 2, and then a couple hours were spent on procrastination techniques finding things to use for character development exercises. So I probably could have gotten a little farther today, but I didn't.

But tomorrow's another day, and The End is getting closer.

'night all.

I should be packing to go up to my parent's house for Thanksgiving (for the second time ever- my family usually goes to other relative's houses, so it'll be a quiet one this year), but I wanted to post before I put the laptop in the bag.

I did 3200 words yesterday, all but 500 of which was relatively quick and painless. Which is fantastic. I beat 31 down. It's total crap. Makes very little sense. But hey, it's a first draft. And I think that's been kinda my problem.

I went through three drafts of Arion in a year. And before that I'd gotten through another three partial drafts. So what I worked with last year was pretty polished. Things made sense. I had a plot arc. Holes were found and eliminated (or at least Spackled over). Characters had names. But W&F is so new, and was so totally unknown to me, that the littlest things I didn't know or thought sucked would drive me nuts. Still do, actually.

I know I can allow first drafts to suck. That there will be plot holes and a lot of wandering around before I realize where the story actually starts and what will happen and which character really will get the girl (not the one originally intended). But knowing that and actually being able to let go enough to let it happen... Yeah. Totally different story. I'm a bit of a perfectionist sometimes, and having to get through teh suck parts has been rather happy-writing-time-defeating.

But I hit the turning point yesterday. I know what happens next, and suddenly I'm staring at the end. I'm still not sure exactly how to get it to work out, but it's there. And I finally know what my 'bad guy' is (on page 375).

I jokingly posted on my facebook status yesterday that I wanted to try and catch up with the NaNo'ers (meaning in word count, not any of the other stuff), and that meant I need 42900 words in the next four days. While it totally won't happen and I really was mainly just poking fun at my abysmal word count for this month, maybe I'll at least get to the end of this book.

Or maybe not.

Either way, the end is near :)

And, since I probably won't be posting tomorrow, Happy Thanksgiving!!!