Finished (Sort Of)

Today, I'm happy to announce that I have finally finished my WIP. Well, the first draft of it anyway. This particular baby caused me a much longer labor than I usually like so I'm relieved to have him finally here. But, he also weighed in at a hefty 84,149 words which is pretty long for a YA and tells me that even though the story is all there now, I have a lot work and editing to do.

It's always a relief to get to this point, but the trip is far from over. Now, an entirely different type of work and creative process begins. I have to figure out if anything I've said is worthwhile. There are parts where I know I've done my job well, but plenty of parts where I wonder what I was thinking by putting such gibberish on the page.

Here's the really weird thing though: the bloody thing still doesn't have a really cool name I'm totally in love with.

I've been calling it Blood, in fact. Well, the official name I gave the file was Blood of the Gods but that's kind of a mouthful, isn't it?

Actual conversation held in my kitchen of late:

Me: "I got to work on Blood today."

Husband: "Good. How far did you get?"

Me: "I hacked out about another 2,000."

At which point my children have lost their appetite. Which is actually fine, since I didn’t want to cook dinner anyway. :)

Hopefully I’ll hit on just the right name while I’m doing revisions. Of course, it really doesn’t matter. If I ever get someone to publish it they’ll change the name to whatever marketing tells them will sell best but still. . . it’s nice to call your baby something other than “hey kid” don’t you think?