Second Draft

My current word count is at 22,301. If it changes at all from this point, it will be pretty minutely. I thought I'd be disappointed if I didn't reach 30,000 words, but I'm really quite pleased with the work I have in my hands. It is undeniably full of me: my words, my thoughts, my ideas, my silliness. I am quietly giddy.

I know that I have another seven hours or so to tinker with it, but I don't think I will. If Kaz is up to it, I'll get him to read through the new draft. He has been full of helpful suggestions, and he's been quite brilliant at finding grammatical errors. More than one comma splice has missed my notice, and been caught by him. If he's not up to the second read, no biggy. It stands on its own. I think I've tied up my loose ends, pulled the two parts of my story together, and somehow figured out how to write lesbian in the 1920's... or at least bluffed well enough that I've fooled myelf.

My page count, for you folks playing along at home, is at 82. The page count is only slightly padded by making sure that there's always a page break in between chapters, which is done for my own editing peace of mind than anything else. The length is what I had expected out of my thesis, and I am so proud of myself for getting something of this scope written on my own.

Would I have been prouder if I had made it to 30,000 words? I think I might have, but it would have been a vastly different story. It's punchy -- it moves along. If I added things to make it into a proper novella, it would likely have perspectives aside from Dahlia's, and I'm a little tired of working with that sort of text since we're doing precisely that kind of thing with the group-work novel.

So, as it reaches five o'clock SK time, I think I can officially say that I'm done.

Edit: On a hunch, I did some last minute research about what I had named a club, and I discovered Swing Jazz didn't really get popular until the 1930's. I had named the club The Swing Set (I know, I know, incredibly clever), but I changed it to two-word name, thus losing some of my precious words.

I have printed it, created a witness statement (which Kaz has signed), wrote up a title page with all my necessary info on it, and put it all into an envelope and sealed it up. I shall stop thinking about it now. If I can.