All Done

It's been a ridiculously long time since my last post--a month and a day, to be specific. A lot has happened in my life in that time. The most major change is that I switched from a full-time office job to being self-employed! Of all the wonderful and great things that I've done in 2008, leaving behind the (soul-sucking semi-)corporate world of my previous job ranks in the top 3! Now I no longer work in a place that was making me physically ill; instead, I work from home, and that means that I have a lot more time and energy to focus on my writing.

Unfortunately, that focus was a little lacking for the first few weeks. The transition to being self-employed and making my own work hours was tougher than I thought it would be. Finding the balance between work time for writing and work time for working when it all happens at the same desk was difficult, to say the least. Working won again and again, and it is only this week that I'm finally seeing that unless I put writing first (meaning that I write in the morning before I jump into work), it isn't going to get done.

A few other things intruded on writing time, all of them pleasant. I recently flew to Oklahoma to see my dad's side of the family. That was a fun trip, and I got to visit with relatives that I haven't seen since I was in my early teens. I've also been able to spend more time with my mom, with Cody, and with friends. Now it's merely a matter of finding the right balance between work and fun time (which I think is going to mean getting up earlier than I have been--bummer).

As I mentioned before, this week has been a very productive writing week for me so far. I have finished the third round of edits on Madison. You read that right--I've finished editing Madison! I hope that the changes from here on out are minor and easy (as in, remove a sentence, add a description--not rewrite the final chapter as I just finished doing).

The book is now has 11 chapters, 72,293 words, and 243 pages. (That's 10 pages and 3,800 words longer than the second draft, and 5,182 words longer than the first draft. This makes me a little squeamish about the edits on Areia, which I'm hoping to make smaller. Despite my efforts to trim down Madison to the best prose possible, it still came out longer. Of course, Areia's a much different book... I'll just have to wait and see.)

Now it's officially time to hunt for agents and publishing houses! I'm so excited!