Writing check in

Alright, accountability time. Let's see where everything is standing with both the novel and the short story (#NaShoStoWriMo!)

I'm making small, incremental progress with The Paladin. As far as the writing, grammar, spelling and all that jazz, I'm nearly done with the current sweep, so that's great! Unfortunately, I still have the word cutting issue. I think I'm going to have to go back and watch Jenna Moreci's video on cutting words, because I'm making dents where I need to make holes. I'm hovering just about 140k words and, ideally, I need to get it down to around 110k. 

Now, it is possible that I could submit it as is and see what happens, but for a debut novel, it's probably too big to attract an agent confidently. Still, if I don't make enough progress by the end of year, I may have to just bite the bullet and do just that. Hopefully the quality of the story and the writing will keep my readers attention. I know that readers rarely argue about having a novel too long, but publishers sure do.

Let's check in with my short story. I really need a name for it, but since it's not completely finished, I think I should hold off. So far, it involves the ancestor of one of the characters in The Paladin, an ancient vampire, werewolves, and Theodore Roosevelt. I'm going to be honest, I actually love writing him. I have done so much research on him that I feel I can appreciate him on a whole new level. A lot of the legends about him are completely untrue, but so much else about him is freakin' amazing that he's not dimmed in my perception in the slightest. And, to top it off, the youngest of his Rough Riders had psychic encounters, joined up at age 16, and was a prolific inventor with such patents as the Helio-Gyro-Copter (think an airplane with helicopter blades on top.)

Back on topic, I'm coming along nicely with that at around twenty-six pages. This should translate into a good week's worth of blog posts, if not more. I'm very excited to share it with all of you as it allows a peek into the world of The Paladin, but one that's kind of out of date, if that makes sense. Again, it features a current character's ancestor and Theodore Roosevelt, so if you haven't put it together, this is in the past. The tech, the people, and the organizations that exist within the main novel are completely different, but they are certainly influenced by what happens in this short story.

What about you guys? How's NaNoWriMo treating you? Have YOU written today?

Don't forget to be awesome!