Super Squirrel

61557 words. That's the size of the rough draft. It seems shorter than it should be. But all of the hours, the edits, the replaying of scenes in my head simply don't count as words. I've cried. I've laughed. And most of all, I've been very proud of the work I've done.

But I'm not done yet. As of right now, I have the prologue, chapter 1, and the first eight paragraphs of chapter 2 in a second draft. I'm also entering the rocky territory of my story known as "the rift". The rift is going to slow me down, but when I've finished it, the rest of the rewrite should be relatively smooth sailing.

You see, when I first started this novel, I started from the perspective of a house servant. But I reached a point where I realized it was far too difficult to continue the story through that perspective. I ended up stopping and starting from the perspective of the house bard, Bonyodolum. The story carried much better with her voice. It also made sense to have her tell the tale. It gave me a way to make the beginning and the end form a complete circle and give the proper closing.

But when I wrote the story, Bonyodolum starts much sooner in the chain of events than my first perspective. When I reached where the story began with Bonyodolum's perspective, I decided to skip over most of the events in that initial perspective. I picked up after the perspective and went on until the novel was complete. And so I have a rift in the middle of the story that is told through the wrong eyes. I have to rewrite the entire thing in order to truly finish the story.

Other problems I'm encountering right now include, but are not limited to my cat, my desk chair broke, a problem with using music to focus my thoughts, and a lack of experience with editing.

The cat likes to be an attention whore and I can address that issue by shutting her out of the room if curling up on my lap doesn't do the trick. My chair, having broken requires I use a chair that isn't particularly comfortable. I'm making do and hopefully I'll have an excuse to by a new one soon. The music issue is another thing itself. When I wrote The Rose and the Crown, I had music that fit the scenes that were in my head. This helped focus me and in many ways, accelerated my writing. Unfortunately, the scenes are written and the music doesn't have the same effect. Fortunately, I've discovered that natural sounds such as waterfalls and thunder storms work for the editing process. If I could only get some MP3's, I'd be golden. And, of course, I'm not use to editing. I'm getting better, but not as quickly as I'd like.

I think that's all for now. I've given myself enough of a break, its time to get back to work.