September Update: Done and Done

BOOK THREE IS DONE!

This is not a drill. I wrote through the climax, through the immediate sad aftermath (a phrase I coined when trying to explain the next scene, and Jack said that's officially what it should be called, haha), and all the resolutions. I found an even better last line than I had before. And I wrote THE END.

And the last line is really great. I wrote it after the climax, then had to move it. It's a great line to really hit it home that this is the heroine's journey story arc.

ANYway. Finally. After months of thinking I'd be able to wrap it up. Months of "okay, just one more month, another 15k words." It finally wrapped up at about 142,500 words, a little before noon on Labor Day. A lot of those words are awful and redundant. But. All of the sand is in the sandbox, now. My next step is to shape that sand into a well-constructed sand castle. It's going to take time, patience, persistence, and perseverance. And probably a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But these days, I do really enjoy the editing process as much as, if not more than, the actual writing.

So, while the book is "done," it's not actually done, done. They never are. I'm already thinking about scenes that need to be moved and things I need to add. It's going to be a long book, don't get me wrong. But I'm hopeful that in edits, I'll be able to get it back down around 130k-135k. But as the last book in a trilogy, I think it's acceptable to be longer than the others. I've got book one down to 119k. Book two I think is around 125k. So, yeah. Not more than 135k, I think. I hope.

I thought it might be fun to share some stats, real quick, to show how hard I worked to wrap this book up by this past weekend. I wrote 8k words over the three-day weekend. I wrote over 15k words in a week. And I wrote 15k total in August, and that was after writing about 4k in the first week, then barely writing until the last four days of the month.

It was really important to me to wrap it up over the weekend. The main reason is because August 31 is the anniversary of my mom's passing. She's been gone eight years, now. And as I've been writing this trilogy, I've realized that it parallels my journey through dealing with grief. I realized as I neared the end of book three, planning Diana's resolution, that all of these books were about dealing with the loss of my mom. I was all like "and in the end, Diana will let go of her anger and find healthy ways to grieve those she's lost and...oh. Right." It me. So yeah. Writing "the end" the weekend of that anniversary had a lot of synergy. Diana can finally be happy. And so can I. And I have been.

I also started writing this crazy trilogy in August seven years ago, so wrapping it up in August was also important. Especially since I wasn't able to finish it during Camp NaNo.

Anyway. TL;DR: book three is done and I'm happy.

And I ordered my camera. I'll get it this weekend. I'm so excited.

We'll see what the next month or so brings. It may bring me diving full speed into edits of book three, I may jump into SP, or I may try to write a Cafe story or two. I may do absolutely nothing for a month or two. I'm kind kind of just listening to myself to see what I'm up for. I'm strangely not as tired as I thought I'd be after all that. I'm more invigorated than anything. It's weird.

Also, in the last month, I've decided to table querying Druid Wars until next year. I may still work on edits for it before the year is out, but I won't plan on querying until spring of next year. In hindsight, all those rejections really did a number on me, so I'm not in a hurry to put myself out there again. It probably means burning the SFFpit like I got, but at this point, I don't care. I am not in a place where I have the energy to query and receive rejections, let alone deal with an acceptance if I happened to get one.

So yeah. My goal this month is to take it easy and work on those things I feel like working on. I might try to hit my 15k words by writing a Cafe story or throwing a few words on various projects, but if I fall short, it's fine. Next month, I will try to work on edits on Druid Wars before diving into crazy writing in November.

I have no idea what I'm writing for NaNo. And I'd like to keep it that way until a few days before it starts.

I have no idea what I'm doing this month as far as writing. I don't even know if I'll have anything worthwhile to update about next month, so it may be quiet here for a bit.

All I know is that I'll be taking some pictures for awhile.