greygirlbeast (greygirlbeast) wrote,
greygirlbeast
greygirlbeast
  • Mood: still exhausted
  • Music: Tom Waits, "Cold, Cold Ground"

THE END (Pt. Two)

I'm sitting here looking at the two ms. boxes that contain the complete first draft of Daughter of Hounds, waiting for that moment when I'll actually begin to believe that it's done. It hasn't come yet, that moment. It may not come for weeks. I began writing this novel on the sixth of October, 2004, writing the first 500 words in a gentle absinthe haze. And here it is. Done. I mean, all the editing and polishing and spiffing aside. With the two appendices, the ms. is approximately 146,336 words long. I don't yet know if my editor's actually going to permit the appendices to be included, but I very much hope so. Without them, the ms. is about 131,358 words long, 1,345 of which were written yesterday. So, with the appendices, the ms. is 684 pp. long; without, it's 613 pp. long. By comparison, the ms. for Murder of Angels was only 556 pp. long. Of course, these numbers mean nothing to anyone but me and my editor, and I'm not even certain how much they mean to me. I think it was about 4:30 p.m. (Caitlín Standard Time) when I finished. There was an unexpected deletion of some 2,493 words, when I decided, at the last moment, that a framing device wasn't going to work after all. Anyway, this morning — this afternoon, whatever — I'm sitting here waiting for it to feel real, this conclusion. If you ask me, I'd say I think this is the best novel I've ever written. I hope others will agree. And it just occurred to me, I have now chronicled the writing of three novels, start to finish, on Blogger, and one on LJ. Weird.

I wish all this meant that I could take a week or two off from writing. But it doesn't mean that at all. At this point, I can even afford a day off. I have only fourteen days to finish the revision of Threshold. Even at a chapter a day, I'll just barely make the deadline, and, THE END or not, DoH still isn't ready for my editor to see. And there are other, lesser things to attend to, as well.

At least there's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this coming Friday night.

I need to call my agent.

Anyway, after writing yesterday, I watched a documentary about the sun, and something about Hannibal on the National Geographic Channel, and then four more episodes of The Outer Limits — "The Special One," "A Feasibility Study," "Production and Decay of Strange Particles," and "Chameleon." I think I went to bed about 1:30 a.m.

As of this morning, we have about three quarters of the subscribers for Sirenia Digest that I'd like to see before the first issue goes out sometime later this week. Subscribing is easy. Just click here, read the FAQ, and proceed to the shiny, happy PayPal button. Thanks!
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