Day 21 of the Dream

Well, 21 days ago sat down at my desk at school to begin writing the Prologue to Honor Among Outlaws. To keep on the VERY ambitious schedule we've settled upon I had to produce 10,000 words a week for the last two weeks of school. With the help of Vincent from Winged Hussar/Zmok, and Romeo, Brian Pulido and Gena Robinson, I learned, quickly, how to craft a decent outline, so I had a good road map to use . . . I think.

So, I'm 21 days in, and SHOULD be, by my own schedule and factoring in end of school year events, around 25,000 words . . . and I'm at exactly 24,451*! So, not so bad! And for those of you following along at home, that's about 25% of the word count (which is contracted to be between 80,000 and 100,000) . . . but not 25% of the outline  . . . so I'm going to have to pick up the pace a little bit, or prepare to beg for more space :)

The process so far has been amazing, but like most creative endeavors, an emotional roller coaster. There are days when I actually think I'm pretty good, and there are days when I think I'm going to bring the average value of all Western Literature down appreciably by my efforts . . . most days are spent somewhere in the middle, of course. So far I've only had to reach out to Vincent once for moral support, asking, at about 1am, for a simple email that needed no further message than "You don't suck" . . . he immediately responded with "That's too bad, I was just writing you an email telling you that you suck" . . . so the value of that response was . . . questionable. He then responded with a much nicer sentiment, thankfully :)

Anyway, so yeah. Today I need to rip out another 4,000 words or so, as my self-imposed schedule, now that school is out, is 4,000 to 6,000 words a day . . . which is 2 the 3 times the recommended rate, but let's see what we can accomplish, yeah? Of course, today I also have to write the script to the next Rapid Fire, and it's my dad's birthday, so that'll eat up some time (on the other hand, I get to have an Apple Chimicheesecake . . . which will make everything better for a little while). And of course, I'm chattering away on my 48 follower blog instead of writing . . . that won't help . . .

OK, back to the 'grind stone', in which a flustered Lucinda Loveless and a frustrated Henry Courtright attempt to use an intrepid anti-hero to track down one of the most notorious evil masterminds of the age . . .

Thanks for reading, and talk to you guys again soon!

~Craig

PS-And hey, I have my own Author Page over at Winged Hussar Publishing! How cool is that!

*PPS-Damn . . . just realized I'd made a minor mistake on my Excel tracking sheet for word count. One minor little error . . . that meant my current word count is only 17,299 . . . damn . . . now all that time and effort seems much less worthwhile, and this climb seems much steeper. I have no idea how I could have done that . . .  Well that sucks . . .

PPPS -- Hmmm . . . ok, so, wrong AGAIN . . .or should I say WRONG! Found the error. I hadn't saved Chapter 4 . . . which is my current project, so got all confused . . . Back on track now, with Chapter 3 added back into the spreadsheet for a grand total, once again, of 24,451 . . . phew! Drama in real-time, though! :)