Considering How to Run: Two Milestones

Hello folks. Kinda sound like Droopy, don’t I?

Two things to discuss tonight:

First, another psychological milestone in the hunt for a novel: Considering How to Run has hit 30,000 words.

What does that mean? Well, technically it means Considering How to Run has hit 80,000 words, seeing as I have decided to combine these words with the previous 50,000 under the umbrella of one book, with the newer title, to avoid any Agatha Christie entanglements, as I blogged earlier.

Second, do I stop now? By stop, I mean do I declare that the first installment of this story, clocking in at the aforementioned 80,000 words, is complete? I’m leaning towards yes, and not just because by any page count calculator I can find, this novel is now at just under 320 pages in length, printed and bound. I have arrived at yet another perfectly natural stopping point, as I did 30,000 words ago.

Of course, we see how well that worked out. I may well keep writing in order to avoid the trauma of actually having to sit down and edit this beast. But that’s the next natural step, isn’t it? That’s what all the agents on the web say to do, isn’t it? And it’s what I know I need to do, simply just to read it for inconsistencies. I’m sure I’ve changed a few names going from one idea to the next. That won’t work. And I’ve still got that gaping hole with the chemistry experiment to figure out. And I’m sure as I edit this thing, I can find other holes that may need filling. All that editing could easily net me another 10,000, 20,000 words, pushing me towards the magic number of 100,000 in word length.

But is it any good? I can cut out slabs of the dictionary that contain 100,000 words, but that doesn’t mean it’d be readable. So, slowly I turned . . .