Today Book IV reached 150,000 words.\u00a0\u00a0 I have twenty days left in the month to finish the first draft,\u00a0 and should be able to do it with a little to spare.\u00a0 Last year I reached\u00a0 150,236 on September 21, so I’m eleven days ahead.\u00a0 Or I would be,\u00a0 if I wrote another 236 words today, but that’s not happening.\u00a0 Close enough, I say.\u00a0\u00a0 Eleven days may not sound like much lead, but at the rate I write in the last half of a book, that’s very likely somewhere around 20,000 words.<\/p>\n
Naturally, with an entire book-in-progress and most of a book in draft\u00a0 between what you’ve read and where I’m writing, I can’t tell you much about what’s going on in the story without having people hollering “No spoilers!” at me. \u00a0\u00a0 I can say you’ll see more of Prince Camwyn, King Mikeli’s younger brother in this one. \u00a0 He’s not a main character, but he’s earned a speaking part on stage. \u00a0\u00a0 He’s also gotten himself into a considerable fix. \u00a0 I think I know where he’ll end up but I’m not at all sure how he gets there.\u00a0 Given his personality, it won’t be the easy way.<\/p>\n
For political reasons, much more than romance, marriages are cropping up in this book–or at least, discussion of them and concern about them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One person finds what may be–if not a love match–at least a compatible person with whom to be comfortable in later years.\u00a0 Another is beset with concerns about genetics (though they have no such science, any culture that breeds livestock understands something<\/em> of inheritance) and political friends and foes.\u00a0\u00a0 Nobody wants to make enemies by seeming to insult someone’s daughter or son.<\/p>\n At least Tsaians and Lyonyans and Kostandanyans don’t have the tradition of betrothing infants and toddlers.<\/p>\n Someone’s son is in a very bad place, having ignored precautions and been overly confident of his popularity.\u00a0\u00a0 Someone else’s daughter is every boy’s mother’s nightmare.<\/p>\n I’m going off to knit, now, and let my sore knuckle rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today Book IV reached 150,000 words.\u00a0\u00a0 I have twenty days left in the month to finish the first draft,\u00a0 and should be able to do it with a little to spare.\u00a0 Last year I reached\u00a0 150,236 on September 21, so I’m eleven days ahead.\u00a0 Or I would be,\u00a0 if I wrote another 236 words today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,107],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1317,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions\/1317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}