It’s been a long, fun weekend filled with lots of being busy! It’s weird, but back at work–even though I’ve got a lot to take care of–it feels relaxing. Maybe it’s just because I’m sitting, rather than cross-country skiing! Andy and I joined Nate and Sadie on Saturday for a cross-country skiing introduction up on Mt. Hood. It was great! Whoever says downhill skiing is harder than cross-country is lying. I’m still beat-to-death and it’s been two days since! I’m going to need some time for my legs to stop hating me. They’re not used to that kind of treatment.
Did make me remember how much I love downhill-ing though! There was something about keeping the skis in the treads that just made the old downhiller side of me shiver with dread at the thought of catching an edge. And cross-country skiis? No edge. I’ve never been frustrated by snow that was “too slippery” as several people said during the course of the day. Snow? Too slippery? But it was! I could barely move on flat, un-treaded ground. Wild.
It was a great experience, though! I’m really glad we went. Plus, it got me outside in the snow, and there were a few moments when the clouds parted enough that I could actually see Mt. Hood’s peak looming over us. It was quite impressive.
Yesterday, I relaxed, but did a lot of financial going-over, paying bills (never fun), and mapping out my week’s to-do lists for Apex, for Tangent, for my own writing stuff, and all the other little miscellaneous household tasks that needed to be taken care of. I’m so lucky to have a husband who’s willing to help out around the house when I don’t have time to! ^_^ It helps that he’s at home anyway, studying for the MCATs. But he’s got an interview on Wednesday, so who knows? Maybe he’ll be too busy to clean up the house, and then we’ll end up losing the cats in the epic rat’s nest it’ll become! Oh, no! O.O
But in the spirit of the New Year, I figured I’d show my base-line of work on the novel thus far, since the word-counter is somewhat deceptive:
You see, there are actually three working drafts at the moment. One is my Cut Scenes “draft”, where I put all the sections I wrote in the main draft, only to decided a day or an hour later that I didn’t like it enough to keep. I chop them out of the main draft to keep it clean, and I save them in the Cut Scenes draft so that I can find old scenes just in case I decide I want to use them after all (I’ve done this once so far). The second “draft” is my Main Draft, or the Working Draft. That’s what I’d show people if they wanted to read what I have of “the novel” so far. It’s the linear, connected-scenes draft. The third “draft” is my Future Scenes Draft, in which I put all the clips of scenes I want to use in the Main Draft, but which are too far ahead in the story to clutter the MD with just yet. Think of it as my holding tank for stuff to come.
So as you can see, there are actually three word-counts that would more accurately reflect the amount of time I’ve put in so far. The Main Draft gets the word counter on the front page of this blog. The other two tend to change radically from day to day. But all-in-all, a combination of the three is the total number of words I’ve put down for the novel so far. In the spirit of not making myself feel useless when I chop out 1,500 words and only add 500 to the Main Draft (thus, on the blog counter, a net loss of -1000 words), I’ve decided to show you where I stand now, in order to better monitor where I hope to be by the end of 2010. SO! Here is the count thus far:
CUT SCENES DRAFT: 5,171 words
MAIN (“WORKING”) DRAFT: 11,712 words
FUTURE SCENES DRAFT: 7,046 words
GRAND TOTAL: 23,929 words
This isn’t something I’ll post up too often, but just to give you an idea of the process. My goal is to get down 500 words per day, every weekday, totaling 10k per month. Hopefully, most of that will be in either the Main Draft or the Future Scenes Draft. And in the meantime, I’ll be updating the word-count meter on the main page to show my (forward or backward) progress.
And that’s it for now, folks! ^_^
Maggie Slater 