Well, I don’t know exactly what it means, but yesterday I got to page 117 in the revision of The Phoenix of Nova Terra. Divide that number by the total pages of the current draft, and you get .20blahblahblah.
So, I guess you could say that I’m roughly 20% through with this revision. In reality, I have no way to tell–I’m expecting the final wordcount to be significantly smaller than what I have right now, so in terms of pages I might be quite a bit further. Or, the stuff I have to revise might be a lot more difficult than the stuff I’ve worked on so far, so I might be much further behind than 20%.
Whatever. It’s a statistic. Am I having fun doing this? I suppose…though I wish my life were better organized right now. 20% doesn’t mean much when you consider that the semester is half over. How in the heck am I going to have three polished novels by November 2009? Sigh.
On a happier note, I took a midterm today and freaking owned it! HIST 240, Middle East history up to 1800–I got a 98% on the t/f / multiple choice. YEAH! The short answer wasn’t that much harder, either.
Also, this Sunday I decided to just sit down and do my work for a change. Homework was backed up (which is unfortunate–I really do like to keep Sundays open for non-school non-work related activities), but I got all the stuff finished that needed to be done, and dove into both my novels right afterward. By midnight, I’d written 500 words for Hero in Exile and revised 6+ pages of Phoenix. Wow! Both goals, hit right on the head. I need more days like that.
When I should be doing other things, I’m reading Mistborn 3: Hero of Ages, and it’s really interesting so far (which is to say that the first five chapters are interesting). I really enjoyed the first Mistborn book, but didn’t enjoy the second one as much. However, I think that has to do more with the fact that it’s the middle book of a trilogy, and so most of the conflicts were left unresolved. Also, the opening section took a lot of time to introduce the characters and the world. The final book dives right into the action and doesn’t take time to describe anything that readers of the first two books wouldn’t already know.
Speaking of Brandon, I read an interesting post on his website that basically tells what writing was like for him before he got published. I’ve heard his how-I-got-published story a few times now, but I’d never heard about any of this stuff before, and I found it really interesting. Also, it was really interesting to hear about the struggles and uncertainty that comes along with being an unpublished writer, because…that’s where I am right now. Or rather, I’m right at the start of the trail, so it’s very good to hear about someone else who went through the woods and made it out to the other side. I want to know what I can expect for the next five to ten years of my life.
