I am the Writing Queen

Since the month of June is passed, I thought I should say that I have so far fulfilled my goal of writing an average of 500 words a day or more. I do actually keep a word log as nerdy and weird as that sounds. One of my favorite childhood authors did the same which is where I got the idea. Does it make me a better writer? No. But I just like to know for some inexplicable reason. As a result, I know that the word total for the month of June is 19,479 words. Oh yeah! That's 31.5 single spaced pages in Word for anyone preferring the horribly inaccurate measure of a "page." However, this is not counting revisions in general. Since I'm a bit too lazy to keep track of every little sentence I go back and add, I only count what I like to call "forward writing," something that advances the story, rather than what is simply added to the back. I may count really large revisions, but I don't think I have so far. It seems like cheating somehow because you can rewrite the same 500 words 500 times and never make any progress. It needs to be done sometimes, but I just can't feel as good about it as normal writing. This is probably why I stink at editing.

The whole draft so far is 47,478 words and 76.75 pages. Anyone wondering what novel I am referring to I have to shamefacedly admit it is my fantasy novel which I thought I had finished. I can feel several friends losing all respect for me right now. The last draft was 800+ pages, but it had taken so long to write that my writing style had changed drastically from beginning to end. I still have hopes of using passages from the later part of the long draft, but the beginning most definitely needs to be entirely rewritten. I have changed so much about the plot and characters, though, I may just have to rewrite the whole thing. This was probably another reason my writing in general languished for so long because I was incredibly depressed by the state of what has always been the story closest to my heart. But I have new optimism. At this rate, the story should be finished a lot faster than the last (previously final) draft, giving the writing style a smoother feel. And as foolish as I feel for telling everyone I'd finally finished and that I would not write any more drafts, I think it's for the best. I now LOVE this story in a way I never did before, and I really believe that THIS is the final draft. But I'll understand if none of you believe me until it's in the bookstore.

If I remember, and it's not too embarrassing, I think I'll let you know my word total for each month. Yeah, gripping news, I know. How shall you bear the suspense for July?