I knew by the time I was into the second chapter of the book that the first chapter was dead weight. I kinda thought I’d keep it where it was until I got to the end and ran over, and then I could just whack out six thousand words really easily and feel all accomplished and stuff. However, in adding new material to support the emotional impact of the storyline, I began re-arranging stuff, and almost instantly it became clear that having this extraneous chapter whose real purpose was to make me feel better about my wordcount was really going to screw up my mental placing of material in the book.
So it had to go. The new stuff I’m working on right now goes in chapter three, and probably other stuff will get added in here and there and the other place, so I can’t add up my book wordcount in any really tidy fashion right now, except for the rather pathetic-feeling prologue+1&2. 64 pages. 64 pages wouldn’t be bad, except before I started rearranging things, it was 133 pages. Gloom, doom, moop, mope.
I mean, ok, yes, I know that the chapter I struck was 23 pages and that yes, in fact, I have 110 other pages of material written and by the time I’m done adding new stuff in the next day or two I’ll very likely be back up in the vicinity of 133 pages. But it *looks* so depressing! And I really, really wanted to break 40K on the book by the end of the month, which was only 1800 words away after today’s writing session if I kept that chapter, but which is now 7800 words away, and I have not been writing at anything like that speed lately.
And now my YTD wordcount and my book wordcount are not the same. V. sad. V. *snif*
ytd wordcount: 38,200