10 day...not.

I didn't reach 10k.

But I reached 7k!

So far, my word count on my novel is 61,090 words.

I don't think the novel is going to be 85k. It will probably land somewhere in the 75k-80k range, which sort of elicits a sigh of relief from me. Sort of.

See, the thing is, if the thing ends up at 80k, I already know that there's 10k worth of material I'm taking out from the beginning, which makes it 70k...

Which makes more room to expand? Maybe?

I'm taking a crack at this thing again tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will try for at least 4,000 words.

Easy enough, right?

*laughs*

10k?

Okay.
This is insane.
I have school off tomorrow, so...
I am going to try for a 10k day tomorrow.
And I'll fail.
But 10k is just an arbitrary number. My record is 6,000 words a day, and after two consecutive days of that, I had writer's burnout for two weeks. Last Wednesday, I wrote 4k (in a school day! Can you believe it?) and I was burned out the days after.
So....
I don't want to stress myself, since I have tests and projects and whatnot.
But....
Tomorrow, I will write like hell.
Cue epic music, pep talks, and bribes.
I'll keep you updated.

Rewriting...change of scenery

Slogging through the second rewrite, third drag. Actually, not slogging, but I actually quite like it. It's more complicated than the second draft, and tons better than the first...

My novel involves elements of imperial China. I'm trying to capture and dramatize the court scandal and plotting, the assassinations...they are incredibly fascinating. 

Guys, I am actually excited for my novel. 

But now it deviates away from the court scandal, into a totally different aspect of the novel--I'll be leaving the palace for the streets of Anchen, my resemblance of Beijing. It will be a totally different world...

But right now, I am making inspiration boards. You know Pinterest? There is a really cool alternative that is like a cross between Evernote and Pinterest, and is amazing. It's called Padlet.

www.padlet.com. Go check it out!

What I'm reading now

Hi! Today was a Saturday, and although I didn't do the 10k words as promised, I did about 3.5k.
Here's what I'm reading this month:
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

This is a book I got in China (but it's a British book) and it chronicles the opium drug trade, and many lives that intertwined in the busy ports of Canton---and what happened when a man named Commissioner Lin stepped up to abolish the opium from China forever. It is related to the topic of my novel, and I do love the descriptions, but it is incredibly dense and it takes me a lot of work to get through it. But the cover! I think that is the most beautiful cover I have ever seen.

The Night Circus by Erin. Morgenstern

Funny story--about 9 months ago, my family was preparing to go to South Korea (on a connecting flight to Bali, our actual destination.)  In the O'Hare airport, I saw a copy of The Night Circus--and I wanted to buy it, because, well, the story sounded intriguing and the characters and oh!-- the cover was beautiful.
But it was an airport bookstore. And airport books are really expensive.
Now, a year later, I am reading it now, and I wish I had bought it nine months ago. No matter the price, it wouldn't have paid enough for the beautiful, illustrious descriptions, the mystery, the intrigue of the circus.
(Okay, you get this blog post's theme now--descriptions and book covers)
Plus, Erin Morgenstrn has done NaNoWriMo (The Night Circus was her Nano novel) and I love her pep talk.
And on her blog, in the archives, I stumbled upon a quote she had read;
"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
Beautiful.

Awesome Video

So I came onto this fantastic video today. Now, I'm usually not a fan of writing videos, because they tend to sort of talk about a great point, then ramble for a bit on it, but this video is truly a gem. Every word is like receiving wisdom from a wise sage. (Well, Neil Gaiman is a bit if a sage sometimes...)
Neil Gaiman on Writing: From The Nerdist Podcast  

Update...and BEA countdown!

Just a quick update.
Yesterday, I pounded out 4,000 words (How? I am in shock.) But today, I am paying for it because my batteries have been effectively sucked up.
I'm a third of the way through the novel, maybe more. But right now, I feel....lethargic. Yes, that's the right word.
I'm in the drama, the fun and games part of my novel. But the scenes don't feel connected, really. Maybe this is just because  I'm writing in Scrivener, so I tend to skip around and write all the interesting scenes...and the scenes that I feel like writing at the moment.But I hope it turns around.
But I can't help but get excited when I realize that BookExpo America (BEA) is less than a month away! *squeals*
This will be my first ever book conference/convention of any kind, and I am super pumped. Oh, the authors! The aura of tons of paper, bound together into volatile, beautiful works of art!
But right now, I have a headache (too much staring at the computer) so I will go get some sleep and hope that by morning, I will not be a zombie anymore.
One last thing--Today, author Veronica Roth finally posted her cover reveal for her Divergent Book 3, Allegiant! Go check it out--and have an excited aneurysm like I did.
http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/2013/05/allegiant-cover.html

I'm back!

Basically, the story of March was this: I went MIA for a bit, then looked over at my 2nd draft and decided that I needed a third rewrite. And then I went to China for two weeks for spring break. It was fantastic.
The story of April is this: After China, I came back, went MIA for some more, and had a week freaking out about my novel and decided that I should go plunge into it after a week of meticulous plotting.
And then the meticulous plotting basically translated into watching all sorts of NaNoWriMo pep talk videos on Youtube. Even though, you know, it was April, and Camp NaNoWriMo was already half over.
This rewrite was going from April 20th to  May 29th. Which gave me exactly 40 days to pound out a suitable 3rd draft before BookExpo America. (Cue excited dance; this is my first time!)
And this time, I estimated that my final word count was to hover somewhere around 85,000 words. 85K.
This is absolutely crazy, and I know it. But the love for my story is still there. It 's not quite like the passion-filled, this-story-is-consuming-every-fiber-of-my-soul kind of obsessive love. But it has sweetened and mellowed.
Either way, I still don't know what I am doing. But I am plugging away at the novel, and I recently ran across a quote by the author Dave Eggers, from his pep talk from last Nano.
"You better do it now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that’s going to happen is if you actually do it. People can’t read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page. 
So you have to do it, goddamnit. You have to do it, and you can step back and be happy. You can step back and relax. You can step back and feel something like pride."
Bravo, Dave. You will keep me going.