A Novel Approach

**pop** (That was the sound of the Champagne cork letting fly) That's about as far as that goes as I can't stand the fizzy white stuff, it can just bubble about and go flat! Besides that, the sentiment is there. I finished my first draft yesterday afternoon, during the very wet British bank holiday. I've ended up with 81,500 glorious words (glorious, maybe?). I've now got the pleasure of my first edit to whittle the word could down to between 70,000 and 75,000. I've also got to make sure the story makes sense, as I think I mentioned before that there was a change of direction, which I think I covered up successfully, but need to re-read it to make sure. There's also the issue of continuity, I have a feeling there will be bits that make no sense. That's what first edits are for ... right?  I can't remember where I read this quote, I think it might have been Terry Pratchett : "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story" Hmm

Wow, what an amazing amount of coverage this charity has been getting recently! It is fantastic to see so many people taking up the challenge, especially the celebrities and to see how many donations have been made to their charity. If you haven't come across this yet, you know for those of you living on Mars or in a cave with no Internet, check it out below: I have to say I've been entertained by some of the videos that are doing the rounds, I'm looking at you Chris Pratt and Donald Faison (hell pretty much everyone doing it). I say pretty much everyone, as some have just done the Ice Bucket dunk with no mention of the charity or the illness they are raising money for, just for some publicity of their own. Thankfully there are plenty of others (about 160,000+ others) who have donated, including me! I didn't get "called out", why would I, no one knows who I am! Doesn't stop me from donating to a worthwhile charity. Now, I don't know anyone wit

Well besides having a pretty crappy end to last week and a sleepless weekend, this week is looking very "up". I had a yo-yo temperature on Friday night and a pretty sore throat, which followed throughout the weekend, followed by bouts of meh and sleeping lots. Finally started feeling normal again Monday, but what a waste of a weekend a bug can be! Word Counts Anyway, I had a bit of a revelation yesterday when emailing my publisher. Somehow I had a word count stuck in my head from before I started properly down the publishing highway and it now seems I've been aiming a little high (certainly as an unknown author)! I'd researched average word counts and for Sci-Fi (which is where I'd put my novel originally) "they" say a word count of around 110k is good (between 90-125k), as there are lots of details to elaborate in a fictional world. Even a Fantasy book is around 90-100k words. Quote: * Science-Fiction:  90,000 to 125,000 –  Encom passing many

I felt I needed to do a bit of webby stuff yesterday, so have added a cool new feature that allows you to find some famous/well known books with similar word counts to your book or manuscript. At the moment I'm sandwiched between " The Adventures of Tom Sawyer " at about 69,066 words and " The Woman Warrior " at about 70,957 words. You can find it by going to my website and looking under the "Fun Stuff" menu, or following this link . Disclaimer: The list or word counts has been collected from various sources across the Internet and comprises 166 titles. I don't know if these word counts are actual individual words or a calculation based on pages, average words per page etc.  Either way, it's just a bit of fun! Oh and my thighs still ache from the bull riding at the weekend!!!!

It happens from time to time. Other family things that need dealing with, work, having a family break, they all need doing once in a while. So I've not had a massive progression of the manuscript for Benjamin Sorrow in the last week or so.  It seems like I melted my brain when I was away for my writing weekend. I have crept forward to 70k words though and am now trying to work out the big "reveal" introducing the main protagonist proper and all that guff. This weekend was fun though, we went to the Ramsey Steam and Vintage weekend and our 2 year old was beside him self when he saw the steam trains and engines. Got a future in Steampunk and sci-fi all lined up for him :)  For the first time in my life (now I know why I'd not done it before) I went on a mechanical bull! "Grip with your thighs" the woman said. "There are muscles there?" I said the next morning! I managed a whole 23 seconds the first time, then 25 seconds the second time. Dead pr