It’s been two weeks since I started my “sprint to the finish” on the last 60 pages of Degrees of Horror. What do I have to show for it? Well, lessee… Hmm. I’ve managed to whittle down from 60 pages to 54 pages remaining. Wait a second. That’s shameful! That’s less than a page every two days, which was the exact opposite of 2 pages/day I was shooting for.
…EXCEPT! In the same amount of time the overall manuscript page count has grown by 16 pages; the word count by 5,500 words. This reflects my job in this chapter, which is essentially turning lengthy plot seeds into fully realized Savage Tales. Maybe a better gauge of my progress is simply counting the number of Savage Tales I’ve finished and how many remain? Using that measuring stick, I’m halfway through the chapter. Considering I’ll still have to tackle the chapter on characters and creatures, I probably really am behind where I hoped to be when I announced the sprint. Still, I can’t help but feel really good about the work I’ve done so far. The Tales are coming along much faster than the plot points did since I don’t have the “overhead” of keeping track of what came before and what comes after. These are just fun, scary adventures centered around college life.
That being said, sprinting is hard. It’s not a pace I can keep up forever. I still have a day job, which means I work all day, come home to the family, and then work on writing at night. Since starting the sprint I’ve mostly abstained from reading, watching tv or movies, or just about anything other than writing.[1. …with the exception of Facebook. I still spend entirely too much time there.] That’s okay for a while, but the new Dresden Files book comes out in late November and it will be mine. Sorry, friends. A man has to have priorities.
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