I'm thinking I could finish the book tomorrow. I say "finish" as if it's done, but it won't be. I finish it, go back over it, and then I go back over it again...and again. I have to be sure the chapter headings are all the same, and I look for any red squiggly lines or double-blue lines that indicate a possible grammar check. The red squiggles tell me I've misspelled a word. I love that. I wish I could catch all the mistakes, but it's virtually impossible for me to do that.
So, I'm 87% done if I'm going by my 86,000 standard. The book will be another 5x8, I don't think I'll do the 6x9 anymore. I don't like it. I know others do, but I really don't. I have some books that are 6x9, but I look at them and think I should go back and reformat them. I'm not going to do that probably, but I do think about doing it. I'm such a mess. Maybe if I had NOTHING to do I could do that, but I usually have something else to do.
Tonight, after finishing three more chapters, I sat down and wrote out about 80 to 100 actions such as "she turned to her left" or "shifting his weight". I want to add these short descriptive phrases throughout the entire text to make it more interesting. I tend to leave out so much of the action when I'm writing. I don't want my readers getting bored, so I have a standard list of 200 or so phrases that I use and then I try to come up with more toward the end. There really are just so many times you can say something without needing to add a descriptive phrase to seal it.
Saying something like "reaching for the homemade soap her granddaughter made" will prompt me to add at least another sentence or two to the book in order to incorporate the descriptive active phrase. It's a game I play with myself. By the end of the book I've added another 3000 words usually, and I like myself so much more for having forced myself to think. Sure, we all want to end the book, but we need to end it properly and with purpose.
After I write it, after I stuff and fluff it, I go back through it for details. I remove things, I add things, I change things. For instance, today I changed two people's names. They were boring. I mean, you're allowed to have boring names in a book, but I want some of them to be good and solid names that people can remember in the future. The singer I have in this one is John Wilson, that's boring, but it's basic, and he's a good character. He won't be making another appearance in another book, and he's not the main character, so he's just John. I could change his name to Spencer Wilson, I may do that. I could also make him taller, more robust, and have him bearded with nearly a crew cut in the back and a mop of long flop on the top; something that the Americans would call quite different; but it really isn't. I haven't described him yet. I need to do that.
The murder is discussed in this section, but I may just let the whole murder thing be unsolved and unattended, as the book isn't about the murder as much as it is about the ranch and that a murder took place there. Who did it isn't as important as the fact that there was in fact a murder on the ranch right after Jule Armstrong took it over. It was the beginning of her questioning as to why she had decided to become a ranch owner in the first place if she had done so with the idea of it being relaxing and a means for her future retirement. She's discovering that being the ranch owner may be more than she bargained for, but she can't exactly get out from under if since her daughter can't afford to buy it, and the Mustangs are really thriving there. It may be something she's stuck with.
What do you want to bet it all works out in the end? I can almost smell it...oh wait, that's my apple dump cake in the oven. I have to go get that and pretend I'm working on the book - see ya.
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