Word Counts

Whenever you're tackling a big project like a novel, small goals are important, and the word count is an easy way to measure achievement. I'm at 60K words on Hammered today, so that's technically three-quarters of the way to my word count goal. It'll probably wind up going over 80K—Hounded and Hexed are both in the mid 80s—but heck, you take your milestones where you can. And I'm not saying these 60K words are golden. They'll get edited and revised and some passages will get cut out completely and replaced with something else. In the meantime, reaching a word count goal is an excuse to do a happy dance, because you need them while you're writing. It's far too easy to get discouraged otherwise.

Here's the difference between writing during school and writing during the summer: During school I averaged only 2550 words a week. During this first week of summer, I've written 9,000. It's really encouraging to make so much progress. I'm hoping I can keep up the pace to finish by the end of June...my deadline's at the end of July, and I like to be early if I can.

In other news, my brilliant wife, Kimberly, is also going to be published. Her article on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American dream was accepted by The Explicator, an academic journal, and will appear in their next issue. She's amused that students can now cite her in their papers about The Great Gatsby.

And for fans of Norse mythology (I know you're out there, Amalia), check out Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout if you haven't already. His protagonist is a valkyrie and he knows his stuff really well. He switches POV between the valkyrie, one of Odin's sons, Hugin and Munin, and others. I'm not finished with the book yet, but I've been entertained so far.