At this point, the story has a long way to go. I’ve barely even scraped the surface of this world and its people even sixty-four pages in. I’ll admit, such an amount of writing in such a short time as one month is an accomplishment, but there’s no point to patting myself on the back until it’s complete. 

As a result I need to set goals as to how I’m to go about this story; earmark different points at which I can step back and take a look at what I’ve written so far, to ensure continuity within my work even with little editing.

On the subject of editing, I don’t intend to edit my work until I’ve completed the first draft, at the very least. Not until I am able to hold a bundle of pages within two hands and call it a story will I be done with the draft, and it will go through at least five revisions before I think about sending it to a publisher.

In the meantime, I have gathered a couple of links to useful sites regarding the publishing of work, either by self-publishing or how to go about sending work to a publishing company, and have listed them below for the usage of anyone who bothers to stumble across this bit of writing. I will continue to add to this post as I find links, and at some point go back in and evaluate their usefulness for anyone interested in writing/publishing.

http://www.blurb.com/?SSAID=314743

http://cbiclubhouse.com/

http://www.agentquery.com/

http://www.smashwords.com/

So it's December now; I didn't reach the goal of 50,000 words by November 30th, but I managed to break 40,138 words. I'm currently still working away on my novel, and it has now reached 40,691 words so far. From the looks of it, this is going to be considerably longer than I originally intended, and may perhaps be part of a series.

Leeder's Grain Snippet

Here's a little gift for all of my readers, few as you may be: 

She smelled of the sea, the sweet salty brine of the ocean and the foam of a white-capped wave as it roiled toward the shore. Her hair seemed to have a life of its own, the thin filaments moving with the slightest motion within the room as they reacted to small sounds, flickering about like grass in the wind at the quiet pad of Molly's footsteps as she hesitantly made her way across the room to stand before her.

The woman extended a thin-boned hand as she turned, fingers curling outward and gently sliding beneath the young girl's chin, tilting her head upward and to the side. “Remarkable,” she said, and her voice had a music in it of a kind Molly had never heard before, the low moan of deep waters beneath its softness.

 “What's remarkable?” Molly asked, returning the pooling gaze of her brown eyes.

 “Why you are, young lady,” the woman laughed, and Molly smiled.

A snippet from page 16 of my novel. Currently on day 9 of NaNo, and catching up to the quota! 

NaNoWriMo Day 6

It is the sixth day of NaNoWriMo, at 3am. At present I have fallen massively behind on my word count. The hoped-for quota at present was about 8,333 last night, but today's quota is 10K (10,000), which I doubt I will achieve unless I do some serious word-crunching. I'm currently trying to word-war my way to the correct amount, but it is doubtful that I will reach it in time. Regardless I will try my best, and see how far I can go.

NaNoWriMo day 2

My word count has bumped  up to 2,416 in the past couple of hours, but is still behind for the day's quota of 3,333. Either way, the story is developing right from the beginning in ways I didn't even think possible. For one, my main character has switched back to that spunky little redheaded girl, Molly, as Prian  has yet to be introduced to the story. It's begun rather slowly, starting with Molly's arrival in Cadge Down and moving onward from there as she settles into her life within the village. So far,  the story is going good and I haven't hit any major roadblocks (yet). I'm sure many hurdles lie in the future, but for the moment, I'm going strong (Despite it being 2 in the morning and being half-awake), and hopefully I will reach the proper word count before heading off to sleep for t he night.

NaNoWriMo day 1

And so it begins!

Within the first hour and a half of NaNoWriMo I pounded out 1,222 word, nearly meeting the day's quota of 1,666. As a result I am spending the rest of my free time today resting and recuperating, as a few days ago I contracted Bronchitis. Not the best of ways to kick off the month, but with how much writing I got done in a short amount of time, I have high hopes for the next several days.

Stuff.

Five days, seven hours, thirty-seven minutes and six seconds until National Novel Writing Month begins.

I've decided that today I'm actually going to take the reference material I now have on armor and attempt to draw fantasy-style armor for Prian. If that doesn't pan out, it's researching one of the many books that I took out from the library and word-warring. Nothing of particular interest to post at this point in time, but isn't that how it is most days? Things will liven up during NaNo, I'm sure, and I'll have plenty of posts to come about how six cups of coffee isn't really a good idea and resisting the urge to tear out my hair about the antagonist and so on and so forth.