Saturday, October 22, 2005

And then there were two

Here's the tally for Friday:

New pages written: 3 (goal: 6.4 pages)
Old pages revised on paper: Chapter 8 and 9
Pages of revisions typed in: 8
Pages lost or gained due to revisions: 0
Total page count to date: 195 (goal: 200 pages)
Days remaining until D-day: 10

Emails from editor in UK: 1 (an auto reply telling me she's out of the office until next week)
Emails from agent in NY: 0

Chocolate consumed: donut, piece of fudge
Junk food consumed: bottle of beer
Exercise: none
Television watched: none
Pictures of Hayden downloaded: none
Tears: none
Weight loss: 1 lbs (gained back a pound since I haven't been skipping meals)

I revised Chapter 8 again. Now it's done! Finally. Only two chapters left. Of course those two will most likely become three and I'll be trying to decide what pages to cut! No matter how hard I try to change my process I can't. Chapter four still needs more work, but I'm waiting until I'm done to do that.

I've moved on to Chapter 9. A four page scene became 8 pages, but I cut elsewhere so I still haven't hit the 200 page mark. But I'm close. I cannot decide how to open the chapter though. I have the scene written, but I don't like the beginning. So I skipped that scene and wrote the next one. Now I realize a later scene should go in between these two! I'm going to have my work cut out for me tomorrow. But I'm feeling pretty good. I remember one book where I was still writing the last chapter with a half hour to go before the FedEx drop deadline. I really never want to do that again!

Not sure if I've mentioned Halloween yet. (I'm pretty braindead!) Anyway, I forgot about Halloween. My kids told me months ago what they wanted to be: Padme, Darth Vader and Yoda. Did I buy the costumes when I had the chance? No. A couple of weeks ago, I finally thought about it. Found Darth Vader on sale at a local store. Bought Padme on eBay using Buy It Now. But Yoda remained elusive. Finally after searching the internet, checking ebay and filling out email in-stock notifications, I received an email from buycostumes.com telling me Yoda was back in stock. I should have it on the 24th! Thank goodness because the last thing I have time to do this year is try to make costumes on my own.