The Romance of Editing and Book Two

A few years ago, I felt a bit meek about telling people what I liked to do since I felt sure that writing wasn't really a job for "grownups" and was the equivalent of telling people you're going to play in a garage band or your dreams of success hinge on the judges and voters of American Idol.

I'm not embarrassed about telling people anymore.  Mostly because I've come to respect being a writer a lot more than I used to.

Writing can be a casual escape for people, the kind of thing they do randomly when they have a blank notebook sitting in front of them or a great idea strikes.  For me, it's a little more serious than that.  When I see a blank notebook, I have to resist writing something in it.  I get four or five ideas for a book when I'm taking my walk or going for a jog in the morning.

Having a good idea and writing it down doesn't make you a writer but it is a start.  The rest is hard work, total dedication, and watching and learning every time your baby gets ripped apart.

Yes, that adorable little pink flower is my purse and the makeup bag
is what I use to organize my markers since I don't have a pencil bag :)

The last few weeks, it's been me doing the ripping.

The picture above is from one of the three days I spent at Starbucks.  Each day I dedicated a little over two hours to reading my book, intermittently between drinking my hot chocolate (with a shot of raspberry.  It would be so boring if you just got hot chocolate at Starbucks) and watching the passersby.  I live about two miles from an outdoor mall and discovered its a great place to work on my book.  None of the distractions from home and relatively empty when kids are in school.  The above picture is one of my more heavily edited pages but I do have a few with just a plain "x" marked across the page because the whole thing needs to go.  I had a lot of fun doing the marking, telling myself every time "I'm going to fix this so it'll be so much better" and trying not to think about the actual fixing process.  In the last few chapters, I came up with a great plot twist that I've written myself some notes about so when I get to editing it, I'll remember to incorporate it.

Things haven't been moving so quickly on my second book.  I've been busy with life and tying up the loose ends of my first and my second book has barely made it past 8,000 words.  With QoT, I did a lot of work plotting it out before I got more than two chapters into writing it but I haven't even started a plot with Darling, my second book.  I have several key points floating around in my head but I haven't yet found the thread that will tie them all together.  Even though the sequel is hinted at in QoT, it has a totally different cast of characters and a different world of problems.  Mostly, it's based off a different legend.  I have a lot more leeway with the legend/fairytale I'm using in Darling, mostly because it doesn't have any roots in reality.  Arthurian legends do and it's occasionally difficult to differentiate fact and fiction when researching for it.

I'll have more updates next time I blog.  I'm bursting to write about some stuff with Darling but if I do, it will spoil some of the surprises from QoT.  First world problems here!

-Anna Leigh

End of the Road, Bottom of a Hill

Sitting at 139,456 words, my first draft is finished!

It's amazing, exhausting, and exhilarating.

And I've barely scratched the surface.

When I started this book on January 18, 2015, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I also didn't know I was going to write to date the longest book I've ever written.  I've spent a few days this last week printing it out and now my entire manuscript is filling a ringed binder.  I read through the first twelve chapters today and did some marking up in spots that need fixing.

The good news is, I'm really excited about the story and how things shook out.  The bad news? I'm going to have a lot of chipping away to do before this thing shines.

There are obvious things, like the fact Gwen has a constantly changing guard when it is only supposed to be one because I couldn't figure out which knight I wanted to have by her side (I think I've figured it out but you never know when that might change), or a character that was more of a main and is now a side character, or a character I am writing out all together.  I had two bad guys and when I was flipping through the pages today (291 gloriously printed ones :), I realized it would be much more logical if my two bad guys were merged into one.  Then there were some awesome moments I read today where she went from not knowing the guy's name to magically knowing it.

I'm proud of Gwen, even though every move she's made and every thought she's experienced have come from me.  She really grew up by the end of the book and doesn't need the people around her to live a happy life.  Arthur hasn't quite reached his awesomeness peak potential but that's more because I was focused on Gwen in my first draft.  I'll be discovering Arthur a bit more in my second though he's in like every one of my favorite scenes.  I haven't had detachment syndrome from her or Arthur yet but I think it's because I know I'm not truly finished yet.  I've jumped the first hurdle, now I have a few more to go.

I've read a ton of people talk about editing and how much they hate it.  I have only really gone through it twice, once with Only Human and then my novella, but this will be way different.  I've learned a lot since I worked on Only Human last year (seems like a lot longer than that) and this manuscript is twenty-five thousand words longer.  All that to say, I'm really excited about the editing.  Yes, it's monotonous and hard and you have to cut scenes that you love and go over and over paragraphs that aren't working out (and weasel words.  I have a love/hate relationship with those babies) but everything comes together.  All through writing a first draft, every time something doesn't work out, I just keep telling myself "I'll fix this in editing." Then, when I get to editing, my biggest fear isn't the time spent but how it will end up.  Will the hours and hours be worth it? Will I love this book as much as I want to?

I'm not sure if people ever feel their work is perfect and I don't expect to.  Actually, it would be awesome if I could tell people "I wrote a book" and not cringe when they ask if they can read it. *cough* Only Human *cough*.

I'm glad to be making progress and really excited for Monday when I'll be starting the next book.  New characters, new setting, new challenge.

So. Ready.

-Anna Leigh

The Finish Line - Step One of Edits

I've been meaning to post for the last week and a half but I've been so busy with my manuscript, I keep forgetting.  The good news is, I'm looking at having the first draft done by Monday!!

*Confetti*

It's been an odd experience from start to finish with this manuscript.  I've finished the first draft for four manuscripts before and only two of them are even halfway presentable.  One of those two is a 30,000 word novella which I wrote in three weeks two years ago and have never gotten back to.  The other two have long since found their way into my recycling bin, which is possibly too good of a place for them.  The fourth one, of course, is Only Human.

I've been working on Queen of Time since January 18, 2015 which is a long time for a first draft but considering I'm looking at an ending word count of 135,000, it's not too bad.  It's certainly the fastest I've ever written a novel, certainly one of this length.  Only Human was really long before edits for me and it was 115,000 words.  It also took me two and a half years to finish - the first draft.  In editing my 21,000 word chunk to send to my critique group this week, it's now down to 18,500 words so I'm guessing my bulky story will shrink down under the same process.

This year's writing experiences have been informative, painful, and roller coaster like.  I thought I had the story all figured out when I started and it's gone in so many directions I never could have predicted.  I've brought in characters I never cared to include but am now so attached to (i.e. Gawain) and gotten rid of characters I thought would be crucial to the story.  It's going to be a lot of work chipping it down and making a good story out of it but the gem is there.  Buried deep deep deep down where only a determined (and possibly crazy) author would go, but I believe in it.

After I finish on Monday, I'm going to print the whole thing out.  I bought myself a new notebook and a set of highlighters and I'll be setting to work on Friday.  I'm not going to chop it apart yet.  It's too soon at the end of a project.  On Friday, I'm taking it to a local outdoor mall and I'm going to read it in one sitting.  I have a notebook where I'll note all the plot holes/changes in plot I see being needed.  I have four different colored highlighters which I'll be marking different things with.  Orange will highlight sentences out of character, yellow for outdated or discontinued story lines, blue for awkward sentences, and red for repetitive words.  I'll mark that baby so much it will hardly be readable and then it will be going under my bed for a minimum of two weeks.  Enough time for me to detox, work on other projects, and forget about the problems in the book, for which there are many.  I've never really set aside my work for so long after writing the initial draft but I've always been tight on a self imposed deadly.  I'm changing my method up a bit this time.  The few weeks time away from it will allow me to concentrate on other things I've been letting go and even start on the final book of the series.

I cried for the first time while writing this week.  I'd like to say it's because I was so wrapped up in the artistic intensity of the moment but it probably had more to do with the fact I'd been sitting for three hours and was six thousand words deep into my day.  There are some difficulties at the end of my book and *spoiler* some deaths that have to be dealt with. *end spoiler* It was a struggle for me to write them because I've been dreading it since I started seven months ago and then, as I was writing, it occurred to me all the characters were dying.  Not because I was killing them but because I wouldn't be writing them again.  Yeah, I'll be editing and doing rewrites but I'm nearing the second step in the journey where I'll be deepening their characters and it's only going to be harder in the next few months when I finish my edits and really let them go.  If you're not a writer, this will sound like crazy talk to you but if you are, I know you get what I'm talking about :)

I'll make sure to write again, even if it's a short post, when I have the official first draft wrap and then again after I get a chance to study my work Friday and share some thoughts!

- Anna Leigh

Character Breakdowns and Legendary Myths

I've been breaking down my characters as I'm nearing the end of my first draft of Queen of Time.  Without even realizing it, I've been weaving a consistency into all of my characters.  It wasn't until I started getting into what made my characters "them", that I realized it.

Gwen is my MC.  She is eighteen, living with a verbally abusive mother and new stepfather.  She has a lot of chaos in her life.  Her solution? Have things as tidy as possible.  In a messy house, she always keeps her room clean.  In a messy life, she lives by the rules.  No illegal music downloading, no jaywalking, no stealing, etc.  She goes from the petty things to the big ones.  It's how she makes her way through life.

Arthur is my male MC.  He's twenty-three, living with a detached father who spends more time ruling a kingdom than being a father to him, and his knights who rely on him to lead them.  Rules are a part of his every day life.  Enforcing the rules tends to mean him living by them.  Only he doesn't always.  He believes rules are only good until the point they cause you to compromise your beliefs.  This is a point of contention between him and his father.

Merlin is the youngest physician in Camelot.  After losing his home in Penrith, he's brought much needed help to the people living under the shadow of the castle walls.  He is very intelligent and believes the technology brought to them from Gwen's world is something they shouldn't be shunning but should be grabbing on to.  He does a lot of work with science in secret so he won't be called out for witchcraft.  He believes rules are made to be broken.  They were made by dull people with dull lives.  The people who've added good to the world were all the people willing to go beyond, to risk everything.

I have several more characters but as you can see with the common thread here, they're one of a few kinds.  Rule keepers, rule breakers, and the one's who take it rule by rule.  They go to varying extremes and each person has a different reason for living life the way they do.

The reason I focused on rules is simply because it shows so much about a person.  When I look at the people around me, a lot of their personality and ethics can be seen in their feelings toward "rules".  When I say rules, I'm not just talking about laws.  I'm talking about a moral code that people live by.  I don't need to know it's illegal to murder in order to know it's wrong.  The fear of punishment doesn't stop me from committing the crime.  It's my own morals that would stop me from even contemplating it.

It's been a good thing for me to remember as I'm writing each character.  When I write Merlin, I'm always asking myself how someone who enjoys breaking rules would react to a situation.  It will hopefully convey his mischievousness.

I'm up to 112,000 words.  I was surging a bit further ahead in word count but I deleted some portions this week and I had to work on my chapter for my critique group so I've neglected my manuscript for a few days.

I was reading a history of King Arthur, mainly the legends involving his death.  I'm using a portion of them for the ending conflict of the book and going a bit of a different direction than I was expecting too.  From what I've been reading, Geoffrey of Monmouth's works are the oldest dramatized accounts of King Arthur we have.  In his works, Arthur succeeds his father at the age of fifteen after Uther's death.  He then leads armies to defeat the Scots and the Picts (who by the eleventh century were Scots as well), conquering Ireland, Iceland, and the Orkney Islands.  At twenty-seven, he sets out to expand his empire by taking over Norway, Denmark, and Gaul.  Because Gaul is still under control of the Roman empire, it leads to a fight between Arthur and Lucius, emperor of Rome.  Arthur wins but while he's gone, Mordred (his nephew in Geoffrey's works) takes over the kingdom and steals Guinevere to be his queen.

My version doesn't go a lot into the battles of Arthur and in my book, Uther is still alive and Arthur is an adult.  Still, battles and the peace of the surrounding territories would've been a big factor in both Arthur and his knight's lives.  I've certainly included more than I intended to when I first started.

I haven't done too much research into Excalibur.  I know its original name was Caledfwlch (also called Caliburnus) and that its magical properties were a big part of several legends, including Arthur's pulling of the sword from the stone.  While Arthur does have a special sword in my book which plays into the story a little toward the end (right now), it isn't magical.  Everything in my book is explained by science.

I've never cared for history too much so to be doing research on a fictional legend from Europe is really outside of my comfort zone.  It'll be interesting to see how this all works out!

- Anna Leigh

Oh Say Can You Say

When I first joined my critique group, there was a little questionnaire that my group leader sent around so we could fill it out and get to know each other a bit.  One of the questions asked what our writing strengths were and one of them asked for our weaknesses.  My exact answer for my strengths was "Not really sure I have any strengths unless an unlimited imagination counts."

Ever since I filled that out at the end of January '15, I've been wondering if I have any strengths as a writer.  This stays in the back of my head whenever I'm writing or reviewing someone else's work.  I'm consistently jealous of other peoples abilities to flesh out characters.  I was recently reading Marissa Meyer's book, Scarlet, the second book in the Lunar Chronicles.  She has so many characters going in her series but they're different, interesting, realistic, and so much fun! Even though there are some things about her writing I don't care for as much, I was really impressed with her character development.  I'm already planning to reread them to get some pointers.

As I've been critiquing other people's work, I've discovered that a lot of people have difficulty writing realistic dialogue.  There's too much back and forth a lot of times and I've read more than one piece of work where the characters trail off onto mundane, unhelpful filler conversation which doesn't get the reader anywhere.  Dialogue is probably one of the longest things I've been working on as a writer.  Even before I knew what paragraphs were or how to use a comma (the last one is still a bit iffy).  Realistic dialogue was really important, even to my twelve year old self.  If only I'd cared as much about my character development.  I'd be much better off today.

Here are some examples of different types of dialogue from my books.  You'll get to see the evolution of my writing and possibility get a good laugh.  Hopefully only when you're supposed to.

June 2012 - A story about two sisters having to move on after their parents death.

“Last box!” Amanda announced triumphantly, plopping the box, which I could only hope didn’t have anything fragile inside, down on top of a stack of already taped and ready boxes.  Her normally perfect hair was a bit fuzzy, revealing her naturally curly hair which she was always trying to tame, and she had a smudge of dirt on her face.

“I can’t believe we’ve finished!”  Angela, a girl with an energetic personality and bright red hair to match dropped down onto the couch next to me.  I laid my head back gratefully, my sore muscles glad for the rest. 

                “A few hours she says-“ I said but was cut off when Amanda tossed me a roll of tape, giving me a raised eyebrow. 

                “Hey, just be grateful we had help or else it would have taken twice as long!”
                The front door opened and a blast of hot summer air swept in, accompanied by a groan from Angela.  She was hot, even when it was ten degrees outside so summer was really not her favorite time of year.  If it was possible, she would walk around in an air conditioning bubble 24/7.
                “Good timing Danny,” Amanda said to the tall blond, gesturing toward the stack of boxes.  “These are the last.”

                “Got it,” He said, grabbing three of the heavy boxes at once and taking them almost effortlessly out to the moving truck.

May 2014 - A story about a girl who's family is forced by the government to house an alien from another planet.

The vibrating in my pocket interrupted my pity party and I pulled the device from my pocket, keying in the password. I missed my old smartphone every day I had to use the BFFT phone and figure out some of its many complexities. Of course, it wouldn’t look good for a government worker to be using a ‘common’ phone like the others.

Mom’s face appeared in bright HD as if she was standing right in front of me, the worry lines that hadn’t appeared until last year more apparent by the day.

“Rose.”

She didn’t have to say anything else for me to know she’d been told. After a deep breath, I forced a smile. “How was your day Mom?”

Mom looked like she wanted to launch straight into her worries but she attempted to keep calm. “We had our mandatory inspection today.”

“Today?” If this was Mom’s idea of small talk, I was not looking forward to hearing her real concerns. “Everything went well?”

“They said everything was in good order.” Her eyes shifted a little.

“But?”

“Mitch caused a bit of a problem.”

I swallowed. “How much is a bit?”

“One of the inspectors gave him a warning.”

“And?”

She continued to avoid eye contact. “And a bloody nose.”

June 2014 - A story about a reluctant, self conscious model for a makeup company and the son of the rival company.

“Zane.” It sounded slightly less dry than I’d been feelin. Why of all people…

“You recognize me?” I couldn’t tell if his surprise was genuine or not. Seeing him up close, I wished I could've made fun of his photoshopped posters as much as mine but I couldn't.  His hair had perfect volume and not a hair was brushing against his forehead.  His skin was even, his jaw square.  I didn't even want to start how good his silver suit looked on him.

“Are you here for the food?” He gestured at the table, his eyes still flitting between me and the poster.

Say something say.

“You’ve gotten taller.”

Oomph. Genius.

He raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t.”

My smile froze. Your arrogant jerkiness has grown with you. Who do you think you are to—

“I read you and your brother are working hard on fall line. C&Z will take on a whole new meaning with you guys taking so much hands on responsibilities.”

He nodded. “You read?”

At least I can.

I dug my ring into my hand a little harder, trying to stop my snarky train of thoughts before it derailed in the direction of my mouth. “When I get a chance to.”

August 2014 - Story about a girl having to take care of her grandmother in assisted living.

The hallway was quiet except for a few staff making the rounds with pills and checkups. Violet got to the elevator before she was out of breath and leaned on the wall for support. The drugstore was close but maybe not close enough.

“Whoa, you’re up early. So much for seven thirty P.M. being the only seven thirty in a day.”

Violet’s stomach clenched with her hand. Why him?

“Yeah, well, some days I have to make an exception.”

Chris stepped back as he got the full view of her face. “Whoa.”

“That’s the second time you’ve used that word in the last two sentences.”

“What’s wrong?”

Violet rolled her eyes. “What do you think is wrong with me? What’s wrong with every old person in this complex?”

“You caught it?” His bouncy tone had quieted a little and he searched her face carefully.

I’m living with a woman who won’t even go to the bathroom by herself when she’s sick. Of course I caught it! “Yeah, looks that way.”

“Do you have to get some medicine?”

“No, just some juice.”

He frowned. “Juice?”

“Grandma won’t take her pills without it and we’re out.”

“So…you’re getting it.”

“She’s too dizzy to.”

He blinked, his jaw tightening. “And you’ve been throwing up all night.”

Violet looked at him defensively as the elevator binged open in front of them. “How did you know I was throwing up all night?”

“You obviously haven’t looked in the mirror yet today.”

“Thanks.” Violet stepped into the elevator, hoping he’d be too grossed out to get in with a sick person.

Current (2015) - Queen of Time

“You almost done, Gwen?” Claire appeared at my side.  Her rhinestone glasses perched on the end of her nose and a sloppy stack of self-defense books filled her arms.

“Light reading?” I shoved at my bangs only to have them slid down again a minute later.

 “Did you read this one?” She angled one of the books my way, the cover depicting a girl going at a punching bag in full makeup.

“Not worth it.  Ever chapter has an advertisement for some gadget to protect yourself.”

“Huh.” She tapped the cover.  “Guess she doesn’t go for the whole ‘the body is a weapon’ thing.”

“The average women carries more weapons than she might think.  Car keys, a purse, heels.” I pointed at Claire’s square pumps which completed the tailored pants and blousy top she wore.  She had the preppy librarian thing on point.

“Mom wants me to learn self-defense.  She’s sure working at the library isn’t safe.”

“It’s good she cares.”  I restarted the computer and it came to life with no evidence Parker’s report ever existed.  I smothered a sigh.

“Gwen.” Claire sat in the chair next to me.  “How are things at home?  Is Bill treating you well?”

“It’s fine.” I opened a new document and set my font preference.

“It’s fine is Gwen code for everything.  Good is fine, bad is fine, fine is fine.”

“Mandy likes him.” Or his steady income.  I liked to think the first.

“Mandy liked Jacob too.”

I flinched.  Claire muttered something under her breath before taking my hand.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

The computer curser blinked restlessly at me. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You don’t need to be involved.” I pulled away.  “Bill isn’t Jacob.”

“Gwen, you’re a bright girl.  Probably brilliant.” She leaned in.  “But you have to know your own limits.  It’s not a weakness to ask for help.”

It is when it’s not your problem.

“I have to get this finished.  Parker’s going to be here in a few minutes to collect it.”

On cue, my phone beeped.  I flipped it open and scanned the text twice before snapping it shut again. 

“That’s not Parker, is it?”

I shrugged. 

“Let me guess, he wants you to totally change the whole paper.”

I cleared my throat.  “Actually, no.  He’s running short on time and wants me to drop it off for him.”

Claire tapped her purple nails against the desk.  “Where?”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Gwen—”

“I’ve got this,” I said in the same way I’d been telling myself for days.  “It’s just this last thing and then I’m done.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Really.”

She patted my shoulder.  “Gwen, you’re smarter than almost any girl I know.  Do you really think that’s true?”

She didn’t wait for an answer as she slipped away, leaving me with the dusty computer and a stress headache. 

Dialogue is something I usually feel confident and comfortable writing.  As long as I know what information needs to happen in a scene, I can usually find a way to make it work.  I do much better when I'm writing sarcastic characters dialogue.  It's probably why I've hard such a hard time with writing Gwen.

Anyway, all this to say, if I were to tell someone my strong point as a reader, I would tell them I'm most confident in my dialogue.  I don't know, I guess my readers are my best judges.

-Anna Leigh

The Past is the Past...or is it?

I can't clearly remember what day it was I decided I wanted to be a writer.  I don't know if it was rainy or sunny, warm or cold.  I don't remember when I went from wanting to write to wanting to have my work acknowledged by more than just myself.  Or when writing started to be so much a part of me, it felt wrong if a day passed and I didn't write something.

My first completed novel was called Ordinary People and centered around a girl named Sharon Smith.  It was written in third person.  Sharon's working a summer job and when she's returning papers to an office, she overhears her boss talking about something suspicious.  She's found out and runs away - conveniently running right into a guy who helps her out.  The guy is none other than the charming (and of course good looking) Johnny McKenna.  For those curious, this novel started at that ripe, mature age of fourteen.  And her name became Sharon far after I started.  Her name was originally Anna.  Johnny was the proud owner of...nope...wait for it...his own spaceship.  It was a small little thing with an interestingly lit interior and parts held together with duct tape.  Sharon ends up on a big spaceship (not the one Johnny owns) after walking through an unassuming doorway in an office Johnny took her too.  This ship was run by a rather unfriendly captain who informed Sharon of her reasons for being chosen to come aboard, reasons I can't remember but would probably cringe at if I dug through the graveyard of notebooks under my bed and unearthed the one with that story.

I had the trilogy planned.  The first book involved her finding her father who was the true captain of the spaceship.  The second would involve her training to become an agent with hopes that Johnny would join the crew. He was a freelancer with his own spaceship who didn't really want to be a part of the main ship after his initial helpfulness in bringing Sharon aboard.  At the end of the second book, Johnny was set to "die", thus leaving the heroine in a tough spot where she had to harden and get past the shock.  The third book, of course, would follow his miraculous recover and his memory loss.

I'm sure you've felt enlightened knowing all about this past book which exists only in notebook pages and which will never make a miraculous comeback Johnny style.  I'm bringing it up as an example to show a bit more about where I am now.  Johnny had some serious Doctor Who like aspects, Sharon was far too brave and yet too dumb for the circumstances, there was no good explanation as to why her dad was hanging out in a seedy part of town and had never contacted her, and biggest of all, no real reason why Sharon was worth anything more than the daughter of Echo-Star's captain (yes, that was the name.  Now stop laughing).  Just like my books started out as rewritings of Peter Pan and Robin Hood, my work was a bad rip off of things I'd watched and read.

Only Human started as a sproutling of an idea.  A question I'd read online about which super power I'd choose if I'd have a chance.  It made me start wondering about how bad it would be to have an ability that couldn't be controlled.  That would be a curse, not a blessing.  My first attempt was in a book about a girl named Alex who was dragged into a back alley and given drugs so she had super human strength.  That gem didn't make it past the first chapter.  I moved on to a new project; one about a girl named Abby Lee who had the ability to read minds.  That one did get past the first chapter.

If I'm being totally honest, I'm not the biggest fan of Only Human.  The story itself is fine but the characters read a bit flat and I'm always looking for a way to change that.  I've put several major edits into it and yet, I'm sure there will be more in the future.  Even so, I learned so much on that book and tried so many things that failed.  One of the things I liked the most about it was its originality.  Not that there aren't other books out there like it but that I came up with the ideas and figured out the story on my own.

It's a little harder to hold my head up about my current manuscript.  I did a lot to step away from the heavy influence of other books and movies for Only Human.  I read two books in two years while I was writing Only Human so I could keep the voices of other writers out of my head.  After coming all that way, I'm now taking someone else's story again.  I know that the King Arthur legend is open for interpretation and open for anyone to use but I can't help this little part of me that keeps saying its not my story.  That I'm twenty years old and still copying off someone else.  Maybe that's why this book is so important to me.  I want to get it right and I want to prove to myself that I've moved on from my Peter Pan days.

-Anna Leigh

75,000 Words

Over the weekend, I managed a contract some stomach bug that's kept me confined to the house.  Usually, my writing time takes a big hit when I'm sick since I tend more toward marathoning K-dramas than getting any work done.  This time has been the exception.

I was really under the weather yesterday but I still managed to get my chapter finished to send to my critique group.  Today, I managed to put 3,000 words into my manuscript which is a serious amount for me.  My daily goal is 1,000 words which I usually make but today, the weather was good and I pounded out another 2,000 while sitting on the swing.  This little word burst officially put me over 75,000 words!

I'm half excitement, half fear.  I already know there's a LOT of work to be done in edits and I haven't even finished the first draft!

I don't know if I've mentioned before but I'm thinking about turning this book into a two books.  I have a lot of info left to put into my manuscript and instead of making it an epic (anything over 110,000 words), I'd like it to be broken up a bit.  Of course, edits might make my current rapidly building word count less of a problem.

I also have a third book intended for this little series that is connected to Camelot but has a different heroine and plot altogether.  I'm super excited about it and can't wait to write some details about it on this blog.

Later,

Anna Leigh