114,695 Words

Okay, I felt like this novel was long, but I always over-estimate, so I was prepared to find out that it hovered somewhere around 60,000 words, barely an acceptable novel length. Oops, no. After my first complete edit, my word total is 114,695! Oh oh. Is that too long for a non-fantasy novel? 

Here's the thing ~ I don't want to cut any of it. Every scene matters, thank you very much. Yes, this was only the first edit, but I can't imagine deleting any scenes. I wrote them all purposefully, not to pad my word count. 

Making it through the entire manuscript, even once, should feel like a victory, but it doesn't really feel like anything. I know my job is far from done. My next step will be to listen to it read aloud again, and that process will highlight a myriad of mistakes and issues, which I'll need to fix. Then, of course, I'll need to read or listen again. It's never-ending, when you think about it. Except I refuse to let it be never-ending. I'm going to perfect the novel as best I can, but I won't continually second guess myself. (As I'm typing this, I'm still second guessing the opening, but at some point I have to pick an option.)

And now I can never dream of hiring a professional editor. The cheapest (ostensibly decent) one I found charges $1,000 for a word count this large. So kids, it's all up to me.

I think the only emotion I'm feeling right now is exhaustion. While my method of pasting a chapter at a time into a new document and editing from there was a life saver, it still has been a slog. (I've got forty chapters, by the way. Is that too many?) And I must say, Microsoft, your Word program's glitches made my job harder. I wondered at one point whether there was a limit to the number of words one document can contain, but my research tells me it's over a million, so I don't know what's going on, but I had to split my manuscript into two separate documents to keep entire passages from fading into nothingness. That's going to be a nightmare when I try to format it for publishing. KindleCreate can't even work that way. Plus, Word just stopped working when the problem popped up. I couldn't re-paste the invisible scenes into the document or do anything, even add a comma. Microsoft is trying to sabotage my career.

What will tomorrow bring? Not sure. Maybe it's time for a break. They always say, let it rest, but it's had several rest periods already. I'd like to be done, so I can retire. I can't foresee ever doing anything like this again.

In my off times, I can start thinking about a title; maybe even create a playlist for the novel. Granted, none of the "songs" mentioned in the book are real (wait - a couple are), but I can always do an "inspired by" list ~ inspired by Paula Barnes, inspired by Leah Branch, etc. I can do fun things, which will be a breath of fresh air.

And that's it. Tomorrow I'll try to blog about something not involving this book. Who knows? That could happen.