Willow Revised Word Count

Last week was ‘return to work’ week for many folk, but after all the holidays and food and celebrating, I betcha hardly anyone got anything done. It was the same thing for me as far as writing goes. Seeing that dear hubby didn’t go back to work until Wednesday, we had a grand time chillin’ with Daniel and hanging out with each other. It almost felt like a real vacation: slept in (somewhat), watched TV, played video games, cleaned house…Hey, I said it was almost a real vacation.

One thing I did decide to do came out of plotting my resolutions for 2007. I wondered exactly how long it really would take me to finish writing Willow. I’m at the point of the book where I can see how the story flows and ends, so I decided to use my handy-dandy Storylines program to plot out the remaining chapters of my book. What I found was this: my estimated word count for this book has been grossly exaggerated.

I thought that this first book of my trilogy would be at least 800,000 words long. When I plotted the chapters to the end, I came up with 73 chapters. Considering that there are roughly 250 words to a page (I’m thinking paperback here), I estimated that the book will be about 400,000 words, half of what I put as an end goal in my sidebar meter. That’s a nice surprise.

So let’s see. I’m on chapter 42 now. That leaves 31 chapters left to write. If I write two chapters per week, it should take me about….15 1/2 weeks to finish the book. Which means…conceivably…I can be done with this book…by the end of April?!?!

Ack…I’m no good with math. That can’t be…can it? Am I missing something here? Probably. I’m not accounting for illness, Daniel illness, days when I’m working on another work, etc. But let’s sit down and push aside all those That’s not right. You are wrong. There’s no way you can finish that up. Let’s brush all that aside and dare a little. That’s right. I’m going to point a finger right at myself and say why can’t I?

Daniel is going to daycare two days a week, giving me an extra six hours to work on Willow. Who’s to say that I won’t finish by the end of April? Only I can. I’m the one who ultimately plops my butt in the chair and hack this thing out. I’ve stuck with it this far…and I’m eager to see the end of at least book one. Maybe I can finish by the end of April.

Maybe I will finish it by the end of April. Or maybe I’ll just wait to for my hubby to get home to recheck my math, because I really do suck at it…

One thing for sure–I’m updating my word count meter. Dialing down that 800,000 word count feels mighty good right now.

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