July 27th

Hi it’s Christina –

Good Morning! I have the perfect day to write. My hubby is asleep, my girls spent the night at friends’ houses, all is quiet, and I feel blah. It figures, right?

I figure I have between 20 – 25K words to go in order to finish FTQ. It ain’t gunna happen before the end of the month. I realize the past three NaNos have been dedicated to FTQ, but the numbers are a combination of my blog and the novel. Unfortunately for me it has been a 2:1 blog:novel ratio. Seems I’ve had more to chat about than my characters.

This simply won’t do. I need to buckle down and get this finished. As much as I hate to do it, I think for the next several days, my blog posts are going to be short and sweet with no writing challenges. I am also going to have to restrain myself from getting lost on line. I need to firmly secure my blinders.

There’s really no excuse. The story is progressing nicely. I haven’t really hit any walls, other than the little trip-up in chapter 42 which I told you about the other day, but it was easily resolved.

This book has been really strange. I get engrossed in a scene. Type it until completion. Then I go back and look, thinking I wrote all these words, only to find I was able to relay the entire series of events in less than a thousand words. 

I guess, now with this being my fourth book, I am subconsciously streamlining, something which does not usually occur until the editing/rewriting phase. (That’s where you pull out all the unnecessary fluff and fillers – silly stuff like changing ‘he went down the stairs’ to ‘he went downstairs’; or using a one word action verb to show instead of several words to tell.)

This is a good thing, I guess. I’m just used to writing more than needed and then witling it down. Which, if you think about it, is a really stupid, and time consuming, way to do it. I equate it to the way I cook – I’d rather make too much and have left overs than make what I think will be just enough, and someone goes away hungry.

Perhaps I have grown enough in my writing that the 80K goal I have in my head will only get trimmed to 75K instead of 70K, which is still an acceptable word count for a contemporary romance. I can always hope, right?

Okay, I still haven’t had any responses of suggested prompts, and my request for assistance has gone unanswered as well. I can muddle through the prompts, but I REALLY could use your help with finding someone from Northern Ireland to read Faerie Tale Queen.

I will not feel comfortable releasing FTQ without the dialogue being authenticated. There’s slang you would hear in Cork or Limerick which you would never hear in Dublin, and there are expressions a street thug would say which would never come out of a respected businessman’s mouth. Please, ask around. Thanks!!

I hope you have an amazing day, and happy writing!