Monday, November 27, 2006

One Chapter and an Epilogue

That's all that stands between me and "The End." Well, that and a complicated thing called "life!"

But I've written every day for the past week except Thanksgiving and even if it's only a couple of pages a day, my write-o-meter keeps inching (centimetering?) to the right. Daily feedback from Lacey and Darcy has definitely helped me stay motivated and reasonably comfortable that I'm pointed in the right direction when it comes to wrapping up this little monstrosity.

And when I'm done, you ask? Well, I'm definitely not going to Disneyland (although my kids would no doubt be thrilled if I decided that would be my reward).

No, my reward to myself will be to synopsize the next two books in the series, Lady Libertine and The Book with No Name. And then I'll decide which one to write first or whether to write them side-by-side. And after I finish one of them, I'll likely come back and revise Living in Sin. Because I'm going to need to get rid of roughly 100 pages and I'll be way too close to it come the end of next week to be that brutal!

5 comments:

Cynthia Falcon said...

Congrats on being almost finished. I only have a prologue started on mine. Keep us posted on when it gets published!

lacey kaye said...

SO.FREAKIN.CLOSE!

Pam Skochinski said...

Yahoo! Can't wait to hear THE END -- or as my 2 year old says "Once upon a time -- The end!" pretty much all as one word!

You'll have to share some teasers from your synopsis!

Jackie Barbosa said...

Hi Cynthia! It's great to "see" you here. And hey, a prologue is a "something". You can't have a finished book until you start! So go, go, go!

And yes, I'm definitely "freakin' close". The degree to which real life keeps interfering with writing the past few days is phenomenal though. I do wonder if I'm procrastolating by paying attention to all these things instead of just dropping them and racing to the finish line.

Leigh, congrats on finishing! I'm doing a happy dance for you. If you want me to have a peek at chapters 2 and 3 before you put them in the mail for the GH, please send 'em right on over.

As for writing another book before editing LIS--I will let you (and anyone else who wants it) read it before I edit it if you really want to, but you have to know that I haven't smoothed out all the plot points and streamlined the story. A lot of scenes in the current version will almost certainly be either cut out altogether or significantly shortened. There are some scenes still in it that relate to old versions of the subplot or refer to scenes I've already cut out, so it's not "smooth" by any means.

I so know what you mean when you say you don't feel "done." I know I won't feel "done" when I write "The End". But I will get enormous satisfaction out of actually writing those words. Because it's something I RARELY manage to do!

Finally, Pam (whose comment came in as I was writing this one!), if you're interested in any teasers, I have a scene from Chapter Three posted on my website (http://jacquelinebarbour.netfirms.com--can't get the www. version to work for some reason!).

I'm trying to decide how much of the book to "out" here and on my website. Something to think about, for sure.

Lynne Simpson said...

Congratulations, Jacqueline!!! :-) Once you get done and query someone, then you can apply for your PRO pin. That'll get you an earlier pick of the editor/agent appointments at National.