Finished

The short story is finished, as of about 1am Friday morning (I needed to be able to print a draft on Friday). It is by no means done, but it's finished.  Without opening the document to check--I'm distancing myself from it until Monday afternoon--I believe it clocked in at just over 27k words, with the submission requirement being between 18-35k words.  That's around 42ish printed A4 single-spaced, Ariel 12 point pages for those that can't grasp word counts.*  The word count will most likely fluctuate wildly as I edit, but being square in the middle of the range means it can do that without concern.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, or at least enough to work with.  After I finish the first round of intense editing, I'll have a few people read it and confirm that yes, it is a complete story.  They can then tear it apart for a second round of editing.

And yes, all this has to happen in less than a month.

*Can you tell that I'm more than a little tired of answering the very arbitrary "how many pages is that?" question?  As I've stated before, you can adjust page numbers hugely by changing the font, font size, spacing, margins, physical page size, and probably several other factors.  If you scroll down quite a ways in this long post, it has the word count of several popular books.

Trash Day

So my parents chose, for some ungodly reason, to get married on February 14, 1980.  For those keeping score, no, I was not premature, and no, it wasn't a shotgun wedding (or at least if it was, I haven't been informed of that fact).  Both of my parents have a strong sense of the absurd, so I'm sure that lent itself to the choice of date, but if you ask my father, he'll tell you they got married on trash day.  Trash day as in the day the garbage men/women/people come by and collect the trash for disposal.

Glad to see the romance was dead at the start :)  Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.  And for everyone else, I leave you with a great comic from xkcd, which is a completely awesome and very smart web comic.  You should go read all of his stuff.

The mouseover text* reads "The worst resolution to the Valentine Prisoner's Dilemma when YOU decide not to give your partner a present but your PARTNER decides to testify against you in the armed robbery case."

*All xkcd comics have mouseover text--to read it, just hold the mouse still over the image and it will appear.

Success!

Only a very minor triumph (story still not done, sadly, but it's outlined out and is probably 2/3 to 3/4 done), but I found it last night in Elizabeth Peters' Night Train to Memphis.  The character I was seeking in the previous post is Aunt Norris from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.  At this point it isn't much use to me beyond the academic, but it's always nice to get that type of niggling thing out of your head.

Yay!

Long day of writing tomorrow, and again on Tuesday.  I figure I've still got about 10k words left, and I've been writing about 1.2k a day, but I'm going to try and push it and see if I can't get it done by Tuesday.  That's really ambitious, and pretty unlikely, but I shall try nevertheless.  And it might not take 10k more words to finish it off, which would be fine as well.  Then lots of editing and restructuring and reading of submissions guidelines and having a few others read it for me and more editing and polishing and futzing and freaking out until it's submitting.  Eek!

Also, thank you so much Claudia for both giving me the heads-up on this open call, and also for confirming that my search wasn't in Borrower of the Night.  If you ever want to read any other E.P. books, I have every Vicky Bliss, Amelia Peabody, Jacqueline Kirby, and several other one-offs (but not all) for your perusal :)

Crap that I've researched today

"Who always has a room open because she never invites anyone to stay literature" (Google; No success on this one--if you know the literary character, please let me know.  I thought it was Miss Havisham, but I don't think it is now.  I'm reading Elizabeth Peters novels to find the answer for it, which is nice, but time consuming.  It wasn't in Trojan Gold like I thought, so time to try Night Train to Memphis.  I know it's in a Vicky Bliss novel, but I think the reference might be to a Dickens or Austen novel.)

"What are skyscrapers built out of" (Google)

"Plexiglass" (Wikipedia) --> "Polycarbonate" (Wikipedia)

"How to dig a hole"  (Google)

"Does ash add to soil fertility"  (Google)

Yes, this is in fact all research for my short story.  If I have to look up more weird crap in the course of writing tonight, I'll let you know.

2012 Reading List: January

4.  The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber
3.  Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter, by A. E. Moorat (pen name of Andrew Holmes, it appears)
2.  *A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
1.  Heat Rises, by "Richard Castle" (Nikki Heat Series #3) (Best guess at ghostwriter: Tom Straw)