Just a blog.

The worst things about getting to work and not having students show up is that 1) Facebook is blocked here by the school and 2) It's so early there's no one on skype to chat with.

Oh, well.  OGT tutoring is halfway done this week.  Four weeks down, four to go (if I come and proctor the test like I did last time).  I will not miss getting up before 7 am.  I don't know how all of the real teachers do it.  After having to deal with this, my respect for educators has grown exponentially.

In other news, Joci is getting closer to crawling.  Yay!  She's gone from rolling around the floor to scooting like an inch worm.  I have a video, but it's not very good.  I'll try and get a good one and upload it sometime, because she looks crazy when she does it.

Sorry there aren't any pictures, I'm at work, so I don't have access to any recent ones.

I haven't posted a weight loss update in 2 and 1/2 weeks, because my job makes it basically impossible for me to weigh-in on Monday mornings.  However, the last time I weighed myself, I was still on track, and I updated my little widget thing on the side to reflect that.  Last week I was up to 9 pounds lost.  Or 9.5, I can't remember.  Anyways, I might shift my weigh-in day to Saturday or Sunday for the next few weeks.

I'm still working on my manuscript pretty much daily.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize that my second draft would be just as difficult (if not more so) than my first.  All of the stuff I skipped over because I didn't want to take the time to do real research now must be researched.  I have to officially decide on a time of year, physical descriptions, ages, and more detailed histories for each character, as well as write in several new characters I just kind of tossed in at the end.  I've also added in several non-characters (I'm sure there's an official name for it, but I don't know what it is), who are people important to the characters in the book (like family members), but who don't actually appear in the book at all, except as motivation/explanation for real characters' behaviors.  They all have to be fleshed out, as well.  This is all aside from the complete rewrite of the earliest scenes of the villain and a few added scenes for the protagonists.

My third draft is going to be cutting, cutting, cutting, because by the time this one is done this story is going to be way too long.  I still don't know that it's any good, but when it's done I can definitely say that I've given it my best!

Oh, and I haven't found the right title yet.  I need a title.

First Draft Complete!

Well, as of 2:30 am, my first complete draft of a novel is FINISHED!  It's been a crazy, intense month spent working on it, but it's done.

I wrote a freaking book.

78,904 words, 390 pages in Courier New font, double spaced, one inch margins.  If published, it would probably translate into something like 340-360 pages.

I can't believe I wrote a freaking book.

Not that it's done yet, I still have a ton of work to do, most of which will involve adding several characters to the beginning that I invented towards the end, cleaning things up, checking for consistency, and adding a more detail.

But I wrote a book, and I'm dang proud of that, even if nothing ever comes of it.