In other words, as of this time, 8:41, Monday, August 15, the word count is 126,019.\u00a0\u00a0 The yarn is flying off the yarn-winder, the thread off the spool, the story out of my head and onto the computer drive as fast as I can type.\u00a0 It’s literally coming fast enough that I can’t keep up and am writing well\u00a0 over 2000 words\/day.\u00a0\u00a0 (In the last 9 days, if my notes are right, approaching 3000.)\u00a0\u00a0 2000 is really all my arthritic hand joints tolerate well, and 9 straight days of 2800+ is…amazing, wonderful, and painful.<\/p>\n
If this book is considered as a horse race in the US, think of Secretariat’s Belmont Stakes run.\u00a0 (Or, OK, just think of the Belmont,period.\u00a0 Big oval track, big round curves.\u00a0 Last week I felt I was past the straight part of the backstretch, into the second curve.\u00a0 Now I know I’m in the home stretch, in the final drive for the end.\u00a0\u00a0 Some horses have a final “kick” for the home stretch and some don’t.\u00a0 This book came out of the gate fast, charged past the stands into the lead, extended itself to the 2000\/day and stayed there through much of the backstretch.\u00a0 Then sped up again.\u00a0 And again.\u00a0 And again.<\/p>\n
So from what I can see now, I know pretty much where this volume will end, and that there will (God willin’ and the crick don’t rise, or a piece of space debris land on us) be more story in another volume or several to come.<\/p>\n
A snippet from yesterday’s writing:\u00a0\u00a0 Dowager Lady Marrakai (her husband recently died) and Juris Marrakai, her eldest son, the King of Tsaia’s best friend and now Duke Marrakai, having succeeded to his father’s title. Those who’ve read the Paladin’s Legacy books will remember Juris from early in Oath of Fealty, <\/em>when a courier arrives with word of the Verrakai family having attacked Kieri on the way to Lyonya, and Mikeli is still the crown prince.<\/p>\n And here he is again, older and still the king’s best friend, having told his mother that his oldest sister Gwenno (two steps down the sibling ladder from him, formerly Dorrin’s squire before Dorrin had to leave to save the world) has joined a merc company.\u00a0 He expects her to be horrified.<\/p>\n ………………………………………………………………………………..<\/p>\n His mother laughed.\u00a0 “That girl! Woman, I mean.\u00a0 I knew she’d run away eventually.\u00a0 Over the mountains seems a bit extreme, but she never was temperate.”\u00a0 She looked at him, her eyes alight with humor as they hadn’t been since his father died.\u00a0 “Actually, none of you children has been temperate.”<\/p>\n “Mother!\u00a0 I’ve been the calm one, the quiet one!”<\/p>\n “Juris, you were an inveterate sneak and probably still are.\u00a0 You had to know everything. You bored holes in half the walls of this house trying to find out what everyone else was up to.\u00a0 Do you really think I didn’t know about it?”<\/p>\n ……………………………………………………………………………….<\/p>\n For those horrified to find a Marrakai eavesdropping,\u00a0 it’s a valuable to a king to have a personable friend who is completely reliable (both to eavesdrop and to report it to the king accurately.)\u00a0\u00a0 Juris no longer bores holes in walls and he never spies on the king.\u00a0 If holes need to be bored, he knows who to persuade.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In other words, as of this time, 8:41, Monday, August 15, the word count is 126,019.\u00a0\u00a0 The yarn is flying off the yarn-winder, the thread off the spool, the story out of my head and onto the computer drive as fast as I can type.\u00a0 It’s literally coming fast enough that I can’t keep up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,5],"tags":[22,20,107],"class_list":["post-2826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-news","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826"}],"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=2826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2827,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions\/2827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}