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Made it to 100,010 words…just now. (OK, five minutes ago, time in between spent shaking out fingers. Call it 11:15 pm.) Today’s production was about 1500 words.
At this time last year, I was only about 52,000. Hence the difficulties of last fall and winter. I don’t think I can hit my usual full-steam-ahead production rate of 2000 words day right now, what with LifeStuff, but I’m not in the bind I was in last year as long as I don’t take off a month to lie in a hammock.
What got me past the milestone today was mostly Arvid. I had been stuck on a scene involving Arvid, but suddenly it came alive again. (The book is presently growing in four different places, which is not ideal but will work. I’ll just have to untangle it later.)
Also, the contract arrived today–yes, the contract for this book that I’m now 100,010 words into. And the one after that. I had to spend an hour reading it word by word today, all fourteen pages of fine print. The new normal for publishers (I hear from other writers) has been to quit selling on proposals and require even experienced, steady, reliable writers to turn in complete manuscripts….so I’m lucky to have sold on proposal.
So, a red-letter day on two writing counts, and also one on photography (best image yet I’ve taken of an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Check out the 80 Acres blog.)
Comment by iphinome — July 9, 2011 @ 1:17 am
14 pages of fine print? They haven’t started forcing you to sign it in blood I hope.
Comment by Daniel Glover — July 9, 2011 @ 9:32 am
Congratulations on both counts!
Comment by Daniel Glover — July 9, 2011 @ 9:37 am
A second note, on the publishing end. I have a college mate (from my year of university in the U.K.) who’s had a wonderful month getting her short stories published. But had one show up in print before she even knew it was accepted, much less paid for it.
Comment by elizabeth — July 9, 2011 @ 4:57 pm
Book contracts are…complicated. This is why my agent earns his money (only one of the reasons)–he is far, far better at negotiating contracts than I am. Every word matters. Publishers overall (by report of other writers in the past six months) have become much more demanding and less flexible with their writers on the whole, enforcing things they didn’t enforce before, and adding language that a lot of us think is…um…not in our best interest. (It’s a contract–some things *won’t* be in our best interest but in *their* best interest. And vice versa, once you’re up the stack a ways.) Without going into Details That Must Not Be Named, my agent has picked an acceptable way through the minefield, IMO. But I still read every word, and I still ask questions.
Comment by elizabeth — July 9, 2011 @ 4:58 pm
No blood. Ink. This falls into the category of “all’s well that ends well” as far as contracts go.
Comment by elizabeth — July 9, 2011 @ 4:59 pm
That’s….not a good idea. Unless it’s a publication she’s familiar with and trusts, there should be a signed contract in there giving them the right to publish it. And even so…
But Stuff Definitely Happens and I hope she’s soon paid for it.
Comment by Daniel Glover — July 9, 2011 @ 5:51 pm
Elizabeth, yes, she was. It just took a phone call. And, yes, it was with a magazine she’d had a number of articles published with. It just slipped through on both sides. Yes, I thought it odd too that it happened. Um, no more “yeses” for now. 🙂
Comment by Jonathan Schor — July 9, 2011 @ 7:19 pm
14 pages of fine print!!! I guess your agent does earn his due.
At any rate – congratulations on reaching 100K words.
Comment by Richard Rotheroe — July 10, 2011 @ 7:57 am
I hope that the 14 pages include the sale of hardback books in the UK. Your previous contracts appear to have missed this. I have been buying hardback copies from Amazon.com which delays my enjoyment of your books.
Comment by elizabeth — July 10, 2011 @ 8:41 am
I have two publishers for these books: Del Rey in the US, and Orbit in the UK. Each has exclusive rights in its territory. Orbit publishes my books in trade paperback, not hardcover–that’s their decision, and not something I can change.
Comment by Wanda Robertson — July 10, 2011 @ 12:51 pm
Thrilled to hear the new book is progressing well and has sold. Looking forward to hearing more about Dorrin, Arvid, Kieri and Arian, and all the rest!
Comment by Gareth — July 11, 2011 @ 7:09 am
Well done on both counts.
‘Trade paperback’ in the UK is fine by me. I buy so many books that I really can’t afford to buy hardback of everything so often I have to wait for paperback editions. (Maybe I’ll go electronic someday but as yet just haven’t found them the same).
I’m wondering how soon before many authors/publishers decide to go e-book only and remove the production wait.
Only big grouse with two publishers is when someone re-issues the same book with a different title.
Comment by Genko — July 11, 2011 @ 9:35 am
I wonder how much time it saves to go only electronic. I would think you still have editing, production, design, layout, proofreading, and such. Of course, if you aren’t printing on paper, binding, distributing through the mail, shipping, that would save some time. And of course some people still prefer print on paper.
We’re still producing our bimonthly newsletter on paper and mailing it out to subscribers. We do have the ability for people to opt out of that and do web-only, since we have everything up on the web site. Several other organizations like ours are going electronic only. One says they will put things together at the end of the year and send out an annual compilation of articles. Seems reasonable. Only there are still a few people without Internet access (we send a bunch of them free to people in prison, for example), and some people still prefer a paper copy. Hard to say how long we will continue with it. I know we’re headed that direction, but not just yet.
Comment by leo — July 11, 2011 @ 9:54 am
congrats on the words and the contract. Pre-ordered the third book already. Both in hardcover and kindle version
Comment by elizabeth — July 11, 2011 @ 10:12 am
Exactly, Genko: There’s a lot that must go on to turn out a good e-book–the time saved would be mostly in shipping the paper copies around (from printer to binder, if it’s not a combined shop, from binder to warehouse for shipping, from warehouse to distributors and thence to bookstores.) It’s not ever going to be desirable (even if it becomes possible) to transfer an idea from a writer’s mind straight to the buyer’s e-reading device. All the other steps are necessary to produce a quality book–books today would be better (in terms of fewer typos and the like) if publishers and writers had more time and money, not less, to go from manuscript to print/e-book. Just for a starter, all the good writers I know insist that no one can adequately copy-edit/proofread his/her own book: the writer is just too familiar with it, even if there’s leisure to put it aside for a month. The writer’s eye will slide past some types of mistakes because the writer knows what he/she meant to say. Reading the book aloud to someone is a good way to catch some of them (maybe even most of them) but that’s time-consuming for both parties. All the steps that improve the quality of a book take time–and thus delay release.
What happens without that outside eye is evident on many websites as well as a lot of self-published books. I was checking out a nature site to learn more about the change in nomenclature for a critter on our species list (it has a summary of the latest rat snake name changes) and the site owner–though a knowledgeable enthusiast on these snakes–had consistently used “there” instead of “their.” Easy to do–from meaning-in-brain to sound-in-brain to fingers, fingers will choose the most commonly typed of homonyms (and spell-checkers won’t catch it.) But an outside proofreader would. (For those interested, the governing body has changed the genus name, lumped two species together, but retained the species name of one for the whole. My herpetology books are out of date. When I next have time to update the species lists, I’ll need to change that name, among others.)
At any rate, I agree with you, that the production of quality e-books requires almost as much time–and certainly as much human thought and attention–as the production of quality print books. Of course, some are satisfied to produce, and to read, badly-produced works, and that can be done more quickly. That’s not my choice.
Comment by Jonathan Schor — July 11, 2011 @ 10:53 am
Have the snakes etc changes that they need new names? Does the mother rat snake not know her children?
Comment by Adam Baker — July 11, 2011 @ 5:59 pm
Congrats on getting the contract for the books. Im sure that takes a huge load off your mind. And I know on my end, its great to know that its definite that we have 2 more books to look for.
Comment by elizabeth — July 12, 2011 @ 8:01 am
Adam: Thanks. Much better knowing contract is in hand, with husband’s surgery coming up.
iphinome: No way to tell what percentage of which chunk will be cut. In general, a 10% overall cut is easy–it’s tightening, nothing structural. So on a 180,000 word manuscript, 18,000 can be excised without cutting Story itself. Doesn’t mean the 18,000 words were bad or wrong–but just not essential. However, that same 10% may be done by finding a lump in the gravy (so to speak) and removing the whole lump…lumps are usually on the order of a few thousand words, but sometimes as much as 10,000 if it’s a non-working subplot (a subplot that never weaves back into the main storyline.) Since books have practical limits (costs rise with longer books, not just in the author’s time to write it) cuts may be more or less than 10%. Echoes of Betrayal got a few more whacks than I was thrilled about, but I understood the reasoning. I once cut a short story 35% to meet a strict word-length requirement and make a sale. The scenes I’m now writing are both Story and background; the background will almost certainly need trimming and maybe excision, but I need to write it all out to know for certain. If this ms. is like the others, it will run to the mid-180 thousands and end up 15-25K shorter. In my 120-130K books, cuts were usually under 5K; the space operas first-draft really tight.
Comment by Richard — July 12, 2011 @ 9:36 am
elizabeth (and Richard, Gareth above),
the UK editions have pages about three-quarters of an inch larger each way than basic paperback for a bit of extra quality, is this what you mean by “trade”?
(7.75″ by 5″ against 7″ by 4.25″: I do wish computers could handle single-character text representations of common fractions)