I just finished Chapter 18 in Hatshepsut’s story, bringing the total page count to 417. Woo hoo! People always ask me for the word count, something that’s totally understandable as it’s what agents require. At this point I’m not sure about the word count- I’ve broken the book into chapters for easy access and editing, but my rough guestimate is that it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 103,000.
Yeah, you know that makes me feel pretty good.
We’re leaving for our Mediterranean extravaganza Saturday (decided to go to the Pyramids, in case you were wondering) so I’m going to compile the whole caboodle into one Word document, single-space it (save the trees!), and print the whole baby out. I’ve never edited my own work on paper, always preferring to do it directly in Word, but I thought two weeks without the laptop would be a golden opportunity to get some nitty-gritty editing done. When I grade my students’ papers they come back dripping with blood… er… ink, so I figure I can probably manage the same feat for my own work. And I don’t know about you, but I read differently on paper versus a screen- sometimes I gloss over things when reading them on a computer. So I’m hoping this will give me a more detailed perspective in addition to it feeling more like reading a printed book.
Also, after recently reading Query Tracker’s post on curing, I realized that’s what needs to happen with Hatshepsut’s ending. I’ve only got one more chapter to go plus an epilogue, but the ending of Chapter 18 isn’t sitting well with me. I have a feeling that it’s going to need a major rewrite, but I now realize I need to distance myself from it.
As for the rest of the novel, some of it I haven’t looked at since March. Now I can comb through the early pages, fine tune, and then by the time I get back I should be ready to take a look at what I’ve just written with a new pair of eyes.