764

Seven Hundred Sixty Four.

That is the number haunting me right now. It has taken hold of me and is scaring the living crap out of me. Why? Simple:

Last night I printed out my novel "Clans" so I could begin editing and I damn near passed out when I saw it was 764 pages! Do you know how much paper that is? Damn near two full reams! As if that ain't bad enough: at 250 words/page that equals 191,000 words. I don't know about you folks, but that is far and away the biggest thing I've ever written and it's intimidating the hell out of me. The sheer mass of words I'm looking at makes me queasy. I can't help but think I'll be old and gray (alright: oldER and grayER!) before it's done.

Ah well, there are worse problems in life. I felt the same way when I started writing it; I thought it would take years to finish. Truth is, it only took about 4 months. Editing is always quicker, and I will be using Holly's One-Pass Revisioning again. I had great success with it on "Slayer". Of course, my books always seem to get longer after editing . . . The other thing that is making me nervous is that this is the first book of a series and I haven't even started the outline on the next one yet. I have a feeling it may work out to be a trilogy, with each (at least) as long as the first one. Oy! Normal people don't do things like this. Normal people would never even consider spending years of their lives typing up mountains of paper with made up stories and absolutely no guarantee that anyone will ever read them. It has to be some twisted form of psychosis that makes us do this crap. Worse, I'm moving on to do even more mounds of pulp that are likely to never see the light of publishing day . . . AAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

(sigh)

Such is the life of a wannabee I guess.

Friday - that means game night (yes, I am still undefeated!) and better yet: it's my turn to pick the game! (woo-hoo!) I chose Scrabble, which is annoying the wife to no end. She swore off playing that with me years ago, due to the merciless drubbings I consistently gave her! I am a Scrabble God! She actually tried to override my choice of game but the boy wanted to play it too, so she's stuck. (Nya-nya Nya-nya!)

Busy weekend ahead: we've got plans for both days and a lot of running to do between scheduled events. I also need to cut the lawn (didn't get to it at all last week) and a few minor other outdoor type things. It's time to start packing stuff away for the upcoming winter. Not likely to be much more swimming and BBQ's, etc. this season. I'm still waiting to hear back from two contractors with their final prices on the renovations. They're both suposed to get them to me tonight/tomorrow (but I won't be holding my breath).

Actually having fun at work today (gasp!) I'm busy doing a little bit of programming for a feature that should save the company a good 50k or so. I'm not a professional programmer, but I dabble a bit. It's fun actually; sort of like doing puzzle. I don't think I'd care to do it full time but it's a nice diversion from the routine. I've been playing with programming of various type since I was a teenager and got my first Commodore 64 (how's that for old school, eh?) and started coding my own little mini-games. Never had any formal training but I can usually get little utilities and time savers cobbled together when I need them. All right, lunch is about done: I have to get back to it. Enjoy the weekend . . .

Later!