rain-spattered windowpanes

I nearly dropped my laptop when I saw this photograph because it is so like my own casement window and the wet, lush, very green view of our woods. So here you have it - a look from my rain-spattered windowpane. I don't do drapes but the rest is uncanny. Perfect writing weather. It's taken me a few years to appreciate Washington State. If I still lived in sunny Kentucky I'd not get as much done. So count your blessings, name them one by one...

Speaking of work, I've been editing away on The Locket, praying the galleys for Courting Morrow Little don't coincide with my Kentucky trip. I used to dislike juggling books but it's good to set one aside while editing another. Distance lets you see all sorts of glaring things you miss otherwise. And I don't mean typos. I've used a different last name for one secondary character and changed my hero's eye color:) Among other things.

For those of you who care about such things (the rest of you can yawn without guilt), here's the word count on these last three books:

The Frontiersman's Daughter: 121,835 words
Courting Morrow Little: 108,120
The Locket: 104,829

I just noticed the titles are getting shorter, too! I hope my editors are reading this as it will make their day:) I'm so excited to post this next book cover when I get the green light. In celebration, I'm going to hold a book giveaway. For a copy of Courting Morrow Little, of course. It's going to release a month ahead of schedule - July 1, which means it will probably be in stores by mid-June. Also, for you writer-types out there, I'm going to give away a new copy of Donald Maass's The Fire in Fiction, as I picked up an extra copy at the ACFW conference. So please keep coming back for a visit. Fun things ahead!

whittlin'

Since coming back from that Kentucky trip, I did a word count on my second book. Mercy! I hope my editor isn't reading this. An average novel is about 100,000 words. The Preacher's Daughter is at 150,000 which is a novel and a half. Sigh. So my new occupation is whittling - fifty thousand words or so to be exact.

I wish I was one of those spare, lean writers who have no fat in their manuscripts. This one is extra hefty. But then The Frontiersman's Daughter was, at one miserable point, about 500 pages and 170,000 words. But I have some time yet as the manuscript isn't due till next year. Maybe this third book will be lighter.

Reminds me of this quote by Oscar Wilde:

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Wilde was known for his wit and this comment is surely tongue-in-cheek. If only my whittling was as simple.