![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
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55,943 / 56,000 (99.9%) |
Well, here it is. The climactic finish, the last chapter, and almost spot on to what my revised word count guess was. All I can say is TGIF! Convenient that both "finished" and "friday" start with the same letter.
( Chapter 22 )
( Chapter 21 )
( Chapter 20 )
Everyone is complaining today that Zotoku's word meter thing is hosed today, so we'll skip the fancy little bar graph:
48,325 / 65,000 (74.3%)
( Chapter 19 )
Since I'm posting a bunch of chapters at once, I'm not sure anymore what the word count was on the ones except the last one. So, no little progress bar, just the next installment:
( Chapter 17 )( Chapter 16 )
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34,506 / 65,000 (53.1%) |
I have this feeling that, when I edit this whole story, that this middle section of chapters 11-15 might get seriously revised. When I imagined the story, I thought there would be far less about the travelling, and far more about the day-to-day stuff of life as a Pony Express worker. Stuff we're only getting to just now. So, who knows. Maybe I'll find a way to shorten up the earlier stuff and lengthen out the stuff that's this chapter and tomorrow's chapter. But for now, I give you:
( Chapter 14 )
Oh, and also, I CROSSED THE HALFWAY POINT! WOO HOO!
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27,416 / 65,000 (42.1%) |
If you just read chapter 10, there's some things I should tell you before you read chapter 11. Because otherwise you'll find yourself saying "Hey, wait, that's not right!" Up to chapter 10, we've seen two Pony Express riders come by. I liked them at the time, but they're not historically accurate. The bulk of Zeke and Isaac's travels have been during the month of March, whereas the first actual Pony Express ride didn't start until April 13th (a Friday; natch.). When I plotted out the novel, I actually intended for the reader to "witness" the first rider going by, but somehow I forgot about that when I was doing the earlier chapters. Anyway, I'll go back and fix the earlier chapters after November, and will continue on the correct way from here. Thus, here in Chapter 11 you'll see a (correct) reference to the fact that the express hasn't actually started yet.
Second, after writing the first paragraph of Chapter 11, I decided I needed an actual map of the surroundings of Zeke and Isaac's station. So, after some poking around on <a href="http://terraserver.microsoft.com
Anyway, sorry for the poor planning! Hopefully I'm the only one who cares, and nobody's confused as the story goes on.
( Chapter 11 )
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24,416 / 65,000 (37.6%) |
Here's chapter 10. I'm as un-thrilled with it as I was with chapter 8, from a "travel montage" perspective, but folks said that one held up well enough so here's hoping.
( Chapter 10 )
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20,282 / 65,000 (31.2%) |
Well, for better or worse, here's chapter 8. I can't say as I'm thrilled with this chapter. It feels sort of chaotic and un-focused. My chapters have tended to focus on longer, more in-depth scenes, whereas this one is a longer series of smaller scenes. It's necessarily so, as it's mostly a travel montage, but then there's elements of info-dump towards the end that bug me too. Ah well, November's for writing, not editing. Anyway, I'd be grateful for any comments regarding ideas for how to make this all flow better, later.
( Chapter 8 )
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15,390 / 65,000 (23.7%) |
Well, after taking a lazy day off on tuesday, I wrote my butt off for 4700 words (exactly!) yesterday, and got two more chapters. So, to make up for yesterday, here's today's double feature:
( Chapters 5, 6 )
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10,556 / 65,000 (16.2%) |
Well, this chapter was a flat-out hell of a lot of fun to write. Thanks, in largest measure, to the fellow who won the charity naming-rights auction back in October, and contributed the names and certain attributes of a couple of characters you'll meet herein. My gratitude to him for being such a generous fellow and for coming up with some really cool ideas for these characters that I'd never have thought of myself.
( Chapter 4 )
