So there I was, happily click-clacking away, writing in my spare time, whenever I could manage to do it. I was wondering why it was taking so long to convert my one screenplay into a novel.
Yesterday I was curious how far along I was in my quest for a novel. I did some research and found that a novel is between 55,000 – 175,000 words long. Fine, but I have never been one to count words, I just write and gauge my progress by the number of MS Word pages.
So I took one of my chapters which was at its target of ten full pages, and did a word count, it was 3900 words. Okay take that and multiply it by my target of 25 chapters and you have 97,500 words. Given that a few chapters are and will be a few pages longer than 10 pages and I have, or will, cross that 100,000 word mark; just in “Part One.”
What that means is that my “Part One” has become the first book in this very long novel series. So I have gone back to the beginning and I am now: editing, expanding and fattening each chapter up until it is at that ten page mark. I will then go back and edit it a few more times to make sure that it is passable before I let another human read it.
I do need to find an editor willing to work with me to help make this the best it can be. I don’t want someone to just edit it and hand it off to a publisher, as it has to be my work, not theirs. It needs to remain Tanean and not Canadian or English, if that makes any sense to anyone but me. I keep thinking of Tolkien constantly editing (behind the editors) The Lord of the Rings to change “Dwarfs” to “Dwarves.”
It is encouraging to find that I have made more progress than I had thought as I was 3/4rs of the way through Part Two. I had already figured out how to extend it and end it in a shocking way that would allow me to extend the last part of the original screenplay into yet another book. After that there is the TV series to make into books . . .
Come on people, buy the book already so I can make a living doing this . . . oh yeah, need to finish writing it and then publish it . . . I had best get to that. Now that I know that I have already “done” (almost) Book One, I am eager to get it ready to go to the next phase of being shopped around.
It would be nice to have Book Two “done” and me working on Book Three by the time book one is released. (Gee, this is where that Editor/Wife would come in handy . . . gotta get me one of those.)
As far as staying in the trailer is concerned things are going fine, yet I do seem to need to plug in nightly. Since I run my furnace in the mornings and in the evenings and when I am asleep, that fan on that furnace seems to suck the juice out of Wanda’s batteries. I mean in the summer I can go a week or two without charging, now it is nightly.
Again, I have my warm clothes and Jenny so I will be fine. Last night I thought I would try to see if I could make it through the night with just running Jenny for a bit. I ran her for an hour and a half and that got me through the evening and most way through the night, by about the time I ran out, the furnace stopped.
I will plug in tonight after I spend the evening at a coffee shop as I wait until I can plug in. That way I can be warm and still edit, or at least try to. The one overriding theme of this journey is that I can and will both survive and adapt to whatever comes my way.
I am finding that I am more resourceful and heartier as well as not as stuck in my ways as I once thought. In the warmer weather I do like this lifestyle, in the colder weather it is the cost savings which keeps me here.
If anyone was to do what I am doing, I would plan and prepare and wait to start out on your journey either on April 1 or May 1, depending on your comfort and braveness level. Remember, that if you are moving out of a place you must commit yourself over a month before you do move, so be sure that you really want to and can do it.
While I do not particularly enjoy winter, I can endure it and see it through. I keep my eyes on those paid off credit cards and my books being published. That is what keeps me going: the dream of Debt Freedom.
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