Hi friends! I’ve been pretty scarce around these parts lately. I leave for vacation in just over three weeks, and I’m on a mad dash to get the first draft of my WIP finished before then. And since I’m so deeply embroiled in WIPdom these days, I figure I’d take a page from the books of Alicia, Pam and Quita and give you a little snapshot of what I’m working on. So here we go!
Title: Oh. Crap. FAIL already. I’m keeping the title a secret for the time being. But as noted on my “Writings” page, its initials are still I.W.A.P. So it could be I Want a Pony! Or Inca Wars: A Précis! Or even Italians Wear Argyle Pants! (Hint: It’s none of those).
Genre: It’s a YA thriller involving secrets, lies and time travel.
Pages: 198 at present.
Chapters: No idea. Numbering chapters is one of the last things I do. Learned that the hard way. Four Stones has something like fifty chapters, and I manually had to change them about eight times with each revision I did. That sucked. So now I leave them blank until the very end.
Word Count: 56,190 and counting. I’m guessing (hoping?) this first draft will clock in at the 75,000-80,000 mark. So I’m close(ish)!
Draft Time: I started a draft in January or so, but that turned out to be a false start. I started again in June, and that was a better start, but I decided to change the entire plot around the 30,000 mark. So I started again on … hang on, let me check when I first opened the document … August 21, and I’ve been working my tail off on it. Fortunately, I was able to cull a little bit from the earlier drafts, so that helped.
Origin: It all started when I heard a song on the radio and could not get it out of my head …
Beverage and Music of Choice: This WIP was brought to you by the magic of peppermint tea and the music of Thievery Corporation.
Random Facts:
- For fun, I entered YA Highway’s first lines contest a couple weeks back. I actually wound up coming in second. Here’s my first line: “Five minutes ago my name was Amanda.”
- That first line might have to change. I love it as an opener, but I just don’t know if it’s going to work.
- The last line I wrote was: “My mom kept me out.”
- That last line has GOTTA go. It’s pretty awful.
- Here’s a text conversation I recently had with my sister. She’s a doctor who up until a year ago worked in the ER:
Me: So let’s say I was brought into the hospital with profuse bleeding and needed blood but then passed out. Should I wake up in a room upstairs or in triage?
Sister: You should wake up in a trauma or critical care ER room with nurses putting in two IVs and pumping you full of fluid and blood.
Me: Cool. Thanks!
Sister: This is for a book, right? Please tell me this is for a book.
- This is the fastest paced, most high stakes novel I’ve attempted. It’s also the most complicated plot I’ve ever come up with. It seriously gives me headaches sometimes. *glances around at beta readers* I’m gonna need A LOT of help filling all of these plot holes. Be warned.
- The story takes place in Boston, mostly because I needed a city I was intimately familiar with. Although I did include one scene that takes place in a location in Boston that I never once stepped foot in. I’m grateful for Google maps.
And that’s it! Who else wants to play the WIP game? It’s super fun!
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