Richard Wright

Okay, another five and a half thousand words done on Craven Place, and into Chapter 32. I’ve broken the 60,000 word mark, which at the start of the week I would have said put me with another quarter of the book to go. As you can see above, I’ve reassessed. When I left off earlier this evening, I was into the final pages of the screenplay that forms my guide and synopsis. The mysteries are explained, the villain unmasked, and there’s a single confrontation to be had. Not a lot else to be done, and I’m sure now that I’ll definitely finish by Friday (erm, possibly even tomorrow). I’ve amended the countometer thingy above to 70,000 from my previous guesstimate of 80,000 words, but even that is generous. I’ll be amazed if it hits 65,000, which surprised me when I worked it out this afternoon. I spent so much time this month working over what I’d already written, I haven’t really sized what’s still to come.

This will make it damn short for a full novel (the usual estimated word count for a novel would be about 80,000 – 120,000 words for a ‘normal’ sized book, whatever that means…). That in turn, may make it a tough sell, when I get it to that stage. I have a few things I want to add in to earlier sections of the manuscript, standalone interjections from various characters which add a different flavour to the action, and that will bump it up a little. At the same time, the first good edit will probably take 6000 words back off, so it’s likely to balance out. We’ll see. You never know where a bit of writing’s going to go before the final full stop, and saleability isn’t really forefront of my mind at the moment. Finishing the damned thing is rather more important.

But the story is entertaining me, which is the most important thing, and I’m glad I made it major project two of twelve for 2009.

Now there is wine. See you on Day 3.