Cultivator
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This is the first time in what seems like ages that I've been capable of sustained mental effort for two days in a row.

Which is a good thing, because it was 1908 words I needed to get rid of to get Frozen Witness down to size, not 908. Ouch.

Frozen Witness word count: 6908
Story Completed!

Not that I'm exactly *done* with it, of course.
For one thing, I need to get rid of at least 908 words before submitting it to the anthology it's for.

Frozen Witness word count: 4323

Still sort of mostly on track. 🙂

Word Count: 2182

I think maybe I *can* fit it into the required number of words.
:::crosses fingers:::
It sort of has three parts, and I'm done part one. So at least I'm in the general vicinity of on target.

Word Count: 721

Negative wordage. This is a *good* thing. 🙂

Frozen Witness
Word Count: 1148

It needs to be between 3000-5000 if I am to submit it to the anthology it's being written for. So I'm hopefully about a quarter done — only it doesn't feel like it. More like a tenth. (Which would make it considerably shorter than Velvet Lies, but still far too long for the intended purpose.) I'm also still not positive it exactly fits the subject requirements, but it's close enough that I don't think they'll be annoyed at me for sending it. *IF* it fits the requested word length.

Nasty big horrible IF.

Crimson Courtesies, Velvet Lies
Word Count: 5500
Estimated Length: 32 000

(There goes the theory that I might have written a novel. And if this one isn't, the two from the Juvenalia aren't either, since they have a few fewer pages to them. So it really is only 6.)

Boyd has asked me to please get back to work on some cover art for Cantata. He feels it is important that this be done (although he admits that he doesn't know *why* he feels it is important.) I told him that if I just did it in the place of my regular art projects and didn't give it priority over, say, writing, I expected it would take me between a month and a half and two months. So, no more Black Flag and no more Chaos Circle for the next couple of months it looks like. Although, I did do some pointless background stuff (an alphabet) for the Cultivator webpages today while waiting at the testing center for Alloria to finish taking her tests, because I didn't want to bring the mouse or pen tablet, and I wasn't awake enough to write yet.

I did about 1400 more words of the Crimson Courtesies, Velvet Lies transcription/rewrite.

I then did a rough total wordage calculation based on how many pages of stuff I had transcribed and how many words I had written as compared to total pages in the handwritten draft. The darn thing will probably turn out to be between 35 000 and 40 000 words. :::grumble::: It's from reading too many Nero Wolfe stories, isn't it? Most of them feel about that length. That's why they come in omnibuses of threes and fours so often.

Anyway, I want to get this one done, so that I can start on a short story for the anthology I've been invited to submit to without this one pestering me.
The next story, (Frozen Witness?), is another murder mystery, like Lies, only this one is set in a frozen wasteland and the key to unraveling it is scientific insight instead of cultural insight. (And if it isn't a whole lot shorter, I'm going to be mad at myself. I can't submit a Novella.)

Oh! I just had the strangest thought. If Lies turns out to be just *over* 40 000 words, instead of just under, I have officially written 7 complete novel manuscripts since my Juvenalia period, instead of 6. Add the two I finished when I was a teen, and I've completed 9 novel manuscripts. Yowza!

Eyes of Infistar word count: 107977

I'm done.
I don't really believe it, but I'm done.

I wrote all morning, over four thousand words, and now I'm finished.

I haven't started celebrating yet, because I'm still too astonished.

One first draft of Eyes of Infistar, completed. Whee!

It took me almost exactly a year, which was twice as long as it was supposed to, but there was all that stuff with me trying to get school going on in there as an excuse.

Yay! Yay! Yay!
Okay, I'll be calm now. Really.

You know, I ought to go have lunch. I think I forgot to have breakfast, and I seem to have gotten lightheaded.

Eyes of Infistar word count: 103840

I'm definitely almost done, I hope to have it wrapped up in the next 6000 or so words, and I doubt it will take me 6 days, because it's hard for me to make myself stop writing this close to the end (besides, my schedule says that I was supposed to be done on the first. Two weeks over isn't too bad, I don't think.)