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From Saturday night |
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well the trip going into work yesterday morning was nice. The weather cooperated and I had my music on. I felt pretty good even though a bit on the tired side. I got my breakfast sandwich and a coffee to take out and sat down to a dialer beside Bud. Good thing I took that dialer because I was having a great start to the day. I was at $505 by break and I ended up with $875 and a $50 credit card. Wil said he’d correct the $15 oversight. I still don’t know what the underlying problem was but if it comes through and the $5 bonus I got yesterday, that’s $20 on my next cheque. I hope. We played the 1 minute/credit card game thing again. It’s good incentive to get credit cards. I got a $50 credit card and that puts me at $7,985 ytd for credit cards. Now watch because we’re dong so well and the time out credit card thing is successful Rob will say, “You have to be at line hour.” Watch it’s going to happen. Anyway we got out of there about 1:40pm although Wil was cutting into our time out bonus. I called Anne as I left the building to Corona and enjoyed the train back with Anne chatting in my ear to Clairview as she was out in the Bonniedoon area getting pet food and stuff. Anne orered us Chinese food for supper after she returned .
The Chinese food was good and the Oilers at Calgary on the road, even better. They won 4-2 and they played a heck of a game. Gerron in net played outstanding but Mac T will end up having Rolly in net in Vancouver Wednesday and they’ll lose there. Neilson and Gagne scored plus 2 goals for Horcoff. I was surprised at all the ammount of Oiler fans cheering the team on in the Saddledome. They were very boisterous, which is good to hear. I’m sick and tired of hearing all the time “Oilers suck.” Yeah, 5 Stanley cups and one goal away from winning it in 2005. What has your team done lately? Oilers are getting better but they don’t deserve the “Oilers suck” chant every night they play on the road. I’m glad they shut Calgary up. I bet by the end of this season if the Flames don't make the playoffs, watch for Iginla to be traded like the Oilers traded Smyth. I'd love to see that.
Anyway, after lunch I went back to the writing. I’m one scene away from reaching scene #70. I hope to get a few more done for today. I ended up closing out #71 and #72 anyway. With any luck at all I should have the 2nd rewrite completed by the end of the month. In the initial phase the story was convoluted. I'm simplifying some aspects of the stroy and it seems to flow better. There are still some points in it that give me pause. I'll do more today.
I’m trying to get my word count for F to just under 100k. I’d be happy to have it boiled down to 99,500 before everything is said and done. Some unsettling writing stats present themselves with just under 10 scenes remaining in the 2nd rewrite: My prospective market calls for 100k. I doubt they‘ll accept anything over. I have 10 scenes left and I‘m already into 91,565 words. My first rewrite has 12,074 words remaining in the last 10 scenes. This puts me over the top even without the 2nd rewrite for the last 10 scenes. Just without the 2nd rewrite for the last 10 scenes I’d be sitting at 103,639 words. That means to get to my ideal word count even without rewriting the last 10 scenes, I’ll need to trim 4,139 words as it is. The last 10 scenes are going to be problematic. This means I’m going to have to cut out 52 words/scene by having to be extremely creative in economizing what I already have. The purpose of the 2nd rewrite was to clarify everything. In other words, I’m writing under pressure folks. The other thing is, why should I put myself through all of this when I know my first effort is doomed to failure regardless? If I continue on and let nature take its course and continue on with the last 10 scenes business as usual, I may find that once I’m done with the 2nd rewrite, I might have something like 110,000 words.
I went and downloaded AbiWord. This is a great little free word processor but the only problem is I don’t have enough Ram to run it properly. I wanted to find out if it could give me not just a word count but how many lines my document has. Turns out I have 9,843 lines. I know every novel is type set differently but it gives me an idea what I’m up against. I have 265 single spaced pages. I’m going to double space them when I get this down to the 3rd draft and take out all the headers and footers.
I suppose the usual way to publish a novel is to go through the slush pile. Having failed that get an agent. Or both. The thing is I want my book to be published in Canada first and failing that then I shop it around at the small press. Some things I've observed about the small press and this may or may not ring true, but it seems to me that the small press has simmilar restrictions in word count. Also, the small press has some quibbles over things like trilogies and the advances are small. There are a lot of small press publisher out there that want science fiction, that's not the problem. The problem is having it published here in Canada first.
Anyway, that’s all for now
e. Jim
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