100! Thousand! Words!

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I may be slow, but I sure am steady. My draft of Matka Danu Miklagarth is now 104,000 words long, smashing last week's goal of hitting 100K. That's more than 100K words of degradation, cruelty, and one extra gross sex part. But also good times! Humor. Cute kids. Delightfully girlish tales of pirates and monsters. Whatever. This book is a strange beast, and I'm along for the ride at the breakneck pace of 100,000 words per year.

The manuscript is not nearly finished. It's going to be a fat doorstop of a book, just how I like it, and I always overwrite the first draft. I've overcome some plotting (plodding?) difficulties. The winds have picked up, and it's (ahem) smooth sailing right now, so I hope to finish the draft quicker than I started it.

Next, I'll go through and cull the words and sentences and paragraphs and pages that aren't worth the paper and ink.

Then I will hand the book to my alpha reader / life partner to catch anything that just plain doesn't make sense or is boring. We can't afford any boring nonsense in this brick of a novel.

Then I will submit it to the sharp, critical eyes and pens of my beta readers so they can mark it up like hard-selling plastic surgeons.

Then I will rewrite it and rewrite it until it is fit for public consumption.

Then I will try to acquire an agent to help me sell out my dream and live happily ever after.

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