I set myself a small, realistic wordcount goal this year, because last year was so phenomenally bad. 200K, that was my goal.
I had over 100K by the end of March, so it was something of a letdown to take until yesterday to reach the 200K mark, but I have triumphed and heck, there are still 3 months left in the year! (And I, uh, want to finish at least 2 more books in that time. And write 3 or more short stories…) Still, I reached goal, so that’s nice.
I’m also at 25K on the epic proposal, and have reached the first big beat and due to having switched characters recently am…not done with the chapter. So I’m going to finish the chapter, make a desperate attempt to fix the horked-up timeline, and…probably send it to my beta readers straight off, although there’s a prologue I also want to finish and put into the proposal as a whole.
I don’t normally do beta readers, so this is nerve-wracking. One’s a epic fantasy novelist herself, one’s an epic fantasy reader, one’s my usual first reader (but even he usually gets a full first *draft*, not a partial), and one is essentially the person responsible for this entire project. I suspect I’ll get what I need out of them, as a group, to solidify the proposal. I also suspect that between the prologue and the chapter I know needs expanding the proposal chapters will in fact come in over 30K, which on any sensible book would be a full third of the manuscript but will probably be more like a sixth of this one.
I further suspect I need to improve the synopsis, although the agent thought it was a good one, back when I sent it to him. Still. Or (and) probably develop a little something for the overall story, too, which, now that I think about it, the agent has historically asked me to do anyway, so I should take care of it before he has to. :)
I have great hopes of getting this in to him by a week Friday. That would be v. good. It may be slightly impossible, but it’s a nice dream. :)