Day Thirty-seven - 70,224 words and counting

I'm writing a novel. All my progress can be found on my private blog. The commentary for each day's work can be found below.

Day four of no internet at Panera. See, this is the reason I voted for Obama... we need to fix what's broken in our cafés and coffee shops. It's time for some real change.

Although I keep an offline version of my novel itself (which runs to some 210 pages as of yesterday, thank you very much), I don't keep these blog posts in such a format. As a result, all of my notes and other musings are lost to me whenever I'm away from an internet connection. At some point, I need to sit down and fix that.

This morning in the shower, I was thinking about the future of this novel. That is, what happens when I'm finished with it? Does it go into a drawer? How do I go about revising it? What do I possibly do from here?

I came up with something that I think is a very good answer. Remember how I didn't do a detailed outline before I started? I think the best thing I could do is to go ahead and do such an outline. That will make me decide what purpose each scene serves in the whole narrative. I should be able to trace through the development of each of my subplots, and fill in blanks or get rid of duplication.

The goal is to be able to go through each scene, decide whether it needs to stay or go, and pretty much pin down exactly what the finished structure of the novel is going to look like. Only at that point will I go back and start working on the language, making sure that the writing really pops and that there are no wasted words. Once I'm satisified with that, it will be time for the spelling and grammar check, and then... well, if I've learned anything from this, it's not to look too far ahead, right?

I last left Bryony in the company of Devan. They're getting some lunch now. Let's listen in, shall we?

For once, that went pretty much as I planned. There were a few clues that I had been leaving all along about Maradeen, and Devan is clever enough to have picked up on them. He likes Bryony, and is therefore more likely to believe her, even though her story is a little unusual.

I think the scene developed pretty naturally after that. I like that Devan was there to witness the scene, because it makes his involvement in the following scenes that much more reasonable. There are a few questions about my timeline going forward from here, but I should be able to figure them out before tomorrow, wherein chapter 18 continues.

Today's Total: 1,774 / 1,689 words (105.0%)
Nov. Progress to Date: 10,997 / 10,134 words (108.5%, 0.5 days ahead)
Nov. Total Progress: 10,997 / 50,670 (21.7%)
Est. Completion: 70,224 / 250,000 words (28.1%, 106 days to go)