I am so tempted to tell you the book's title, but I'm not going to. I can't. I have to wait, and there's a reason, but the thing is, it's a good title, and I really just want to blurt it out right now. I'm halfway finished with the book. I can start there and say more later.
Though I only have 38,000 words, and 38,000 x 2 is 76,000, which is at least 10,000 words shy of being finished, the fact is that I'm finished with Chapter 15. I've written 15 chapters of a book that will likely be 30 chapters, give or take, and then there's the fluffing and the stuffing, and that's where the other 10,000 will come into play. I like to stuff. I like to fluff. It's one of the fun things to do - - it makes me happy.
I have 30 pages of notes. I'll go through each page and see if I can go through the book to stuff that tidbit, that thought, or that little extra this or that into the book, and if I can, where do I stuff it? I find myself adding paragraphs to accommodate the stuffing. I don't typically reduce words; that wouldn't be stuffing now, would it? I add words. I add thoughts. I add ideas, and I add adjectives. One can scarcely have too many adjectives until one actually has too many adjectives.
I'm using the AI again, but this time, I'm asking it questions, getting the answers, reading the answers, and rewriting it. I don't take the things it spits out verbatim. I do use a great deal of it, but then I reword and throw in my personal style to make it mine. I still struggle with crediting the AI, so since you don't need to at this point and time, I won't do it, but I may have my characters thank the AIs they use; that may be a good way to compromise without truly compromising.
The book is halfway finished, and it's getting pretty good. I'm hacking away at the keyboard, drumming up situations, challenges, commitments, compliments, and chaos. I'm forging and forming fundamental fairplay as well as frivious frollick. It's awesome to be this abandoned and feel nothing remotely close to responsibility. That's what the book is about; being unknown, unseen, unexpected, unnoticed but when you are seen, heard, known, or otherwise noticed, there's a reason you chose to be so.
The book is fun to write. I'm trying to get into the characters now and develop them to the point of being interesting without being too much or too anything. I want a balance. There can't be too much taking place; writing out the smallest of activities takes too long. It took a whole chapter for a police captain to question a suspect, and really, we didn't get as far as I would have liked. Not many details were given, which need to be addressed during the fluff. I need to pinpoint and push the proverbial envelope on that one.
As it is now, I'll probably take off tomorrow and even Tuesday. I will write on Wednesday, probably Thursday, and pick it up again over the weekend. I'll do next weekend what I did this weekend and slam out 6 chapters. That will be 16, 17, then 18, 19, 20 plus 21, 22, 23 - - so by this time next week, it should be 3/4 of the way finished. I can still finish it by or close to the end of August. No matter when I send it up for publication, I will choose a publishing date of September 1 to remember when it was published. It will be close enough to it to say it. I may end up sending it on September 1 and then approving it on September 4, only to have a copy sent to me by September 16 and reapproving it around the 20th, and BAM...there you go -- the full truth.
You can't, I can't...simply send a book up and not have a copy printed so I can hold it in my hands, go through it with a pen, and mark out what I don't like. It's a thing, and in every case so far, that's what I've done. That's why I don't publish the EPub at the same time as the print. I have to be sure the print is correct first. I'll EPub this one right after it's printed. It will skip the queue, as it were, and be published for Kindle in September. Why wait? This is THE book to read.
Photo Credit: Hilanddairy.com
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