Spring break

All in all, a success.

Except for the Head Cold of Doom that left me a hacking, wheezing, mucous-y mess for the whole week. Yes, yes, delightful, I know.

But take heart! My book is nearly finished! I always feel awkward this close to the end - I'm never sure I want to actually finish it, because I'm never convinced it'll be any good when I'm done. And truthfully they never are, really.

But, as is my mantra, that is what editing is for.

In a way, this blog has kept me accountable. I can see where I'm struggling, I can see that I've had these issues before. And I've just written straight through them because otherwise nothing would ever get done. Every author has these problems - they have to. I tell myself this because it makes me feel better.

I look at writers like Terry Pratchett, who turned out two books a year at the peak of his career (at least as far as production goes, I'm not talking about quality at the moment), and I think "were you doing cocaine?" I mean, seriously, you'd almost have to be. But then I look at other authors that are equally brilliant, like Christopher Moore and Neil Gaiman, and their output is more what I would consider a reasonable pace. It's hard to throw Neil in there though, because he does so much besides just writing books. TV shows, comics, short stories . . . The man keeps busy, is what I'm saying.

And don't get me started on authors that turn out more than two a year. Ghost writers. They have to have them. I can't even imagine that they don't. If they don't, well . . . Cocaine. All I'm saying. I'm looking at you, Stephen King.

Anywho, the whole kit and kaboodle is rolling in to the climax at the moment, at a scanty 260 pages and 110k words. I'm calling 115-120k before it's done, which is about 10-20k over what I want to be looking at. Ah well. I already know there are things I'm going to axe, and I'm sure I'll find more. Then again, there'll be things I want to add, too. So we'll just have to see.

A question for readers: when you read books, do you want to see what the villain is doing? Reason I ask is the villain is featured in this book, mostly because I kind of like him a little too much. So while the majority of the book focuses on the main characters - the "good guys", if you will - we do get little glimpses of the other side of things. I'd be gutted to have to take all of that out, but if readers find it confusing or off-putting, well, that's more important than me wanting more of the bad guy. Obviously different authors handle it differently, and some might do it well so that it doesn't throw readers at all, but I'm just asking as a generality. Your Input Is Valuable.

So that's the state of things as they stand. I'm setting a tentative deadline for myself of next weekend - I should be able to wrap things up by then. Maybe by the end of this weekend, even. After all, realistically I'm only a couple days' worth of writing away. We'll just have to see; I do do other things with my life, after all.

Ah, who am I kidding? No I don't. Dee-lightful. Finish line, ho!