The chronicles word counter!

[Anne Martin]

Novel: The Eleventh Book
Genre: Literary Fantasy
Word Count: 35,712 (21 chapters)
Status: As expected, I've hit a lull. Part of that is life, but at the same time, I had reached a transition between sections, and that always slows me down. I've just revealed something new. Kyra has just had her first conversation with The Continuum, which is basically the guiding force of the universe, and the source of all the Gods mankind has created. She dreaded asking it questions, and now she knows why.

 

[msstice]

Bk1: 113607 -> 113646

All work on Ch 1. The words didn't change (much) but the paragraphs have been moved about quite a bit. The eerie events are better spaced to build up tension, building up to the cliff-hanger. This needed some tweaks in the causality of the plot. I think I can move on now, to Ch2 and Ch3.

I'm considering repeating this back on the ranch pattern again, this time with some major events back on the ranch brought forward. I have to revise it and see if this improves things or overloads it.

 

[sknox]

Well, health (rhymes with hell). Open heart surgery for me, hey ho. A week in hospital and then two weeks of bedrest. Maybe I'll get writing done but I'm not counting on it, only hoping for it.

Anyway, The Tower of Guard stands at 48k with a fairly clear notion of what to write next, so if health cooperates I should be able to turn in some respectable numbers.

Better yet, I have clarified more aspects of the overall arc (six volumes), at least for Val (lead character) and the principal antagonist. That's going to help with finding places to drop in hints and foreshadowing along the way.

 

[OuttaInc]

Well, health (rhymes with hell). Open heart surgery for me, hey ho. A week in hospital and then two weeks of bedrest. Maybe I'll get writing done but I'm not counting on it, only hoping for it.

Sorry to hear this. Hope it's routine with a speedy and complete recovery!

 

[Wayne Mack]

Open heart surgery for me, hey ho. A week in hospital and then two weeks of bedrest. Maybe I'll get writing done but I'm not counting on it, only hoping for it.

Oh my. This must be terribly stressful for you and your loved ones. One thing to remember, with absolutely no disrespect to the doctors, this is a very routine procedure, almost assembly line like. It is very low risk.

Do not underestimate the recovery time; this surgery will knock you for a loop. Your body will be extremely weak following the operation; you will truly feel like a newborn starting over. Despite the gruesome nature of the surgery, recovery will be largely pain free. Keep up with the breathing exercises; your lung capacity will be down greatly following the operation. If you have an option for rehab services (probably starting at 6+ weeks), take advantage of it. I hope this helps and gives you a picture what normal will look like in the weeks following.

I wish you the best. After all is done, I think you'll find yourself feeling stronger afterwards than you did immediately preceding. The period leading up to the surgery may be the most difficult due to worry and concerns. Don't second guess and try not to worry. Despite the nature, it is a highly common procedure. I look forward to hearing from you again on after all is said and done.

 

[msstice]

Well, health (rhymes with hell). Open heart surgery for me, hey ho. A week in hospital and then two weeks of bedrest. Maybe I'll get writing done but I'm not counting on it, only hoping for it.

Best wishes for the procedure. I wonder if in this case recoding the story (thankfully our phones can do this nowadays) or using a text to speech converter would be helpful at the beginning of recovery.

 

[sknox]

Oh my. This must be terribly stressful for you and your loved ones. One thing to remember, with absolutely no disrespect to the doctors, this is a very routine procedure, almost assembly line like. It is very low risk.

Do not underestimate the recovery time; this surgery will knock you for a loop. Your body will be extremely weak following the operation; you will truly feel like a newborn starting over. Despite the gruesome nature of the surgery, recovery will be largely pain free. Keep up with the breathing exercises; your lung capacity will be down greatly following the operation. If you have an option for rehab services (probably starting at 6+ weeks), take advantage of it. I hope this helps and gives you a picture what normal will look like in the weeks following.

I wish you the best. After all is done, I think you'll find yourself feeling stronger afterwards than you did immediately preceding. The period leading up to the surgery may be the most difficult due to worry and concerns. Don't second guess and try not to worry. Despite the nature, it is a highly common procedure. I look forward to hearing from you again on after all is said and done.

Thanks much for the encouraging words. I'm hearing much the same from others. It's funny; you mention any sort of major procedure and someone has a someone who had that. So, lots of anecdotes.

I feel fortunate to live in the YouTube era. Pick any sort of medical issue and there's tons of material. Some of it gets graphic, but you don't have to watch that. There are also a number of videos on the recovery and rehab process. In the past, all you'd get is a page or two from discharge at the hospital. Of course, it's one thing to watch the movie; this will be more like writing the book. <g>

All cheers and cheerfulness.

 

[sknox]

Best wishes for the procedure. I wonder if in this case recoding the story (thankfully our phones can do this nowadays) or using a text to speech converter would be helpful at the beginning of recovery.

Thanks for the suggestion. I absolutely have that in my back pocket. Right now the plan is to write in my physical notebook as soon as I'm able. That's my usual process anyway. I'm hoping to do a bit of that while still in hospital, but at least during the two weeks of enforced bed rest following. Then type up into computer as I can. But if that just doesn't seem to work, I can record into my phone.

And when I don't feel up to writing, I can listen to old-time radio via that same phone. Dragnet, Suspense, Gunsmoke, and of course Johnny Dollar. Turns out the little speakers on the phone are a close match to an old standup radio, so it gets the vibe.

 

[msstice]

Bk1: 113646 -> 114161

Just revisions, though it is alarming how the word count goes up instead of down. Contemplating a major structural change next - moving a whole chapter up (moving a particular event X up in the timeline). I think this might just solve an issue I have with motivating why some people go off and do what they do. If event X happens earlier, then these jokers have a much more compelling reason for why they all go off and do Y.

To keep being mysterious and abstract, the difference is between "Look, X could happen, and this will lead to Y, so we gotta do W before we all die." vs "X happened! You wanna wait until Y happens? No, we gotta do W right now, before we all die!"

Note how the second version has all those exclamation points. That alone convinces me, I should move X up.

 

[Troyzan787]

Novel: The Land of Ash (tentative)
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 23,938
Status: Life and uncertainty had slowed me down for quite a while, but recently hit with a wave of inspiration. I have been writing about a 1000 words a day for the last week and feeling good about it,

 

[sknox]

Best wishes for the procedure. I wonder if in this case recoding the story (thankfully our phones can do this nowadays) or using a text to speech converter would be helpful at the beginning of recovery.

Back home today, doing well. Here's a writerly update regarding recording. Turns out there's a thing called ICU delirium. You come out of major surgery and your wits are right well addled. I was in ICU for five days and the clouds are only starting to clear.

So heart surgery? Rest and recover. The story will wait for you. Foot tapping, fangs dripping, but it'll wait.

 

[msstice]

Back home today, doing well. Here's a writerly update regarding recording. Turns out there's a thing called ICU delirium. You come out of major surgery and your wits are right well addled. I was in ICU for five days and the clouds are only starting to clear.

So heart surgery? Rest and recover. The story will wait for you. Foot tapping, fangs dripping, but it'll wait.

Hurray to being back home! Hope you have the support you need outside the hospital! Yes, the story (and work and those other things) will wait. However, I wonder what would have happened if you had done a few recordings. You might have come up with some PKD level stuff!

 

[sknox]

I could barely work the phone. But I know I'm getting clearer because this fragment popped into my Brain Inbox this morning.


"Was it important?"
"Yeah, but only to the unimportant, so nothing got done."
He gazed into the distance.
"I'm going to fix that."

 

[Wayne Mack]

Good to hear you're back. You'll find that your recovery will be quite fast and yet feel far too slow. Try to hang onto those memories of recovery. They will serve as fodder for a hospital scene in the future.

 

[OuttaInc]

Welcome back @sknox! I'll echo what Wayne said. Write down everything as you can. You never know when those details and emotions will come in handy for a future story.

 

[hitmouse]

Slightly different this, I suspect. I have just cut 500 words from a very densely-written paper to fit the submission requirements for a scientific journal. It was originally written for a journal with a 4000 word limit, but was rejected (probably the wrong journal tbh) and so we have modified it for another journal which limits to 3500 words. Quite a job, considering we thought we had a pretty lean product the first time round, and we do not want to leave out anything important. However, it is surprising how much redundancy one can find in even the most considered prose if needs must.

 

[msstice]

Jan 21: Bk1: 113646 -> 114161

Jan 30: Bk1: 114161 -> 114362

There is one part of the story that is a bit surreal. It is presented as a metaphor. In my first version the metaphor was a group of people walking over a landscape. Today I got the idea that these people should be on a ship, sailing over a slightly surreal sea. I tinkered a bit with this idea and got a lot more excited about it than I had been with the land based idea, so I'm now going with that. My next revision work will be to convert the current chapter to the new metaphor.

 

[Troyzan787]

Novel: The Land of Ash (tentative)
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 34,353
Status: Things have really been flowing. Made some edits also, to fix some consistencies after I adjusted some storylines. I also drew a map so that all the places in story have a clearer geography.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

Novel: From the Ashes (Guilded Kingdoms Book 1)
Genre: YA; High Fantasy; Fairy Tale Retelling
Word Count: 133,736 (45 chapters)
Status: Progress is a little slowed, but still moving forward. I'm in the 'final climactic events' phase of the book before the wrap-up and teaser lead-in to book two.

 

[Anne Martin]

Novel: The Eleventh Book
Genre: Literary Fantasy
Word Count: 40,388 (23+ chapters)
Status: It took me a while, but I'm finally over 40,000 words. The Continuum has decided that Kyra needs to see the future, or at least one of the possible futures. The future Kyra was "the second coming" and oozed magic. Anyone who touched her was healed or enlighted, and that threatened the church. The present Kyra arrived on the third day after her assassination, as someone foretold (she never discovers whom). Her "disciples" awaited her as she emerged from St Paul's Cathedral, knowing nothing of what had happened in the past year. She survived another assassination attempt and teleported across the city to safety. She needs to go back to the cathedral to return to her own time.

This little diversion has given me another 5000 words that I wasn't originally counting on, and there are still more to come as she attempts to return, teleporting right into a trap.