More to satisfy my need for public benchmarking than to address any
particular interest of yours, here is a status update in my WIP,
"Goodbye Grammarian".
It's at 97K, with another two small scenes to write. These are
bridging scenes to provide some time to pass between a couple of key
events. I could just make this happen by adding a single phrase like,
"Four days later..." but I need to bump up the drama in one if the
subplots anyway.
I need to do a full read-through with fresh eyes before I send it off
to my beta readers. If I were able to read it out loud, that would be
the best approach. However, at a normal reading pace, a book this
length would take about 16 hours to do. I'm not sure I could do it in
even two solid days of vocal work. I wanted to have this sent off to
my betas by June 1; taking an extra week for a vocal run and
associated rewrites might just be doing work that I'd have to re-do
once I get their comments back.
I haven't done a full spellcheck in this yet, either. yWriter has a
rudimentary spellcheck, but it doesn't have much of a correction
system. It's one of the things I dislike, but it won't be fixed
anytime soon. I'll have to export to Word, spellcheck, then re-import
back to yWriter for more edits. Clunky, and prompts Scrivener envy.
I started out with 90K as the goal, but if it runs between 90 and 100,
I'll be OK with it. I expect the betas to want some cut back and
others expanded.
So there you have it.
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Yay for you, Tony!!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update, Tony. It's a good feeling to be closing in on a -this-feels-like-it's-getting-to-finished- point.
ReplyDeleteOne possibility for reading, that I've used for shorter works, is having my computer read the thing to me. It's MOST unforgiving of my more clumsy attempts at wordsmithery. Painful, but sobering. And it doesn't strain my voice. My ears a little, perhaps.
Great idea from KjM, although I don't know how you would go about doing that but I'm sure you could work it out if you don't already know.
ReplyDeleteBottom line - read it aloud. Before you send it to beta readers. Why? Because otherwise they'll just find all the mistakes you could have found yourself. If you've already fixed those, they can focus on the mistakes you couldn't see. Get it as perfect as you can and then let them tell you how much you need to change. And yes, you will have to redo the rewrites, etc, but newsflash: writing a novel is a lot of work.
Now get to it!
Also, congrats on nearly finishing this draft. A 97k novel is a huge achievement. Yay!
Congrats! That's massive. Louise speaks truth, you listen to her, you live longer! (Or at least your book will be better)
ReplyDeleteDon't forget to celebrate!
Thanks, guys. I'm going to try for a read-through, with whatever time it takes. However, I may also take Kevin's advice and have my Kindle read it to me, just for comparison.
ReplyDelete