Done!

[dr_pretentious]

50,123 / 50,000 (100.2%)

Well, that was strenuous.

By my own calculations using MS Word's word count tool, I only overshot by 123 words. The validation thingy at the Nano website tells me I overshot by more than 2K. I'm pretty sure that just means that, in cutting and pasting from my chapter files to make one big file for validation purposes, I grabbed some of my notes from before November First, along with the vast swaths of legitimate November output. Here, I'm only claiming the stuff I know is legit. In any case, I've done it.

I spent the afternoon over at Turtle Hill hanging out with G, who's recovering from lung cancer surgery. He spent most of the day zonked out on painkillers; I spent most of the day typing furiously away on those last 2000 words.

G says, "Lung cancer was easy. It's the pneumonia that almost killed me." And it's no exaggeration.

During the last of the many weeks when G was in the ICU at Sloan-Kettering fighting for his life, I was safe at home with my complete original set of internal organs, whining about my word count.

It puts things in perspective, is all I'm saying.

Anyhow, tonight there will be champagne with the covenfolk, and we'll plan our solstice celebration, and when I go home, I'll sleep when my husband sleeps. Tomorrow, I'll be free to read whatever I want. Newspapers, Clausewitz, Making Light, anything. I'll be free to go through the ms and cut all the stuff I marked for deletion but left in brackets for word count's sake--give the good words some breathing room. I'll be free to play with the big book, or the short story I was working on in October, or the four other short stories I toyed with but didn't quite start in October. I'll be free to stare into space until the right sentence comes to me, no matter how long I feel like waiting.

It's good to be alive.

Comments

[kistha.livejournal.com]

By the way, your manuscript is officially heroin.

Indeed, I whole heartedly agree.

Congrats. And please send out the results of this fine (and psychotic) little marathon as soon as you feel that the public can consume it.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It does make a pretty good opiate. Like so many junkies, I fear the only way I can hope to support my habit is to turn to dealing.

I'm afraid it will be many, many months before it's fit for public consumption, but it always heartens me to know that there are people who actually want to read more.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Who do you have to kill? I'm really tempted to make some smartass comment about Donald Rumsfeld, but I gather you're in the military, so that wouldn't be such a great career move for you. The televangelist of your choice--how about that?

You don't have to know anything. A playwright friend likes to say there are two things the audience is never wrong about: they know when they're confused, and they know when they're bored. Even if all you can tell me is when the ms is inducing one of those states, that's useful. And I'm pretty sure you can do more than that.