The Event Horizon Goal

I seem to have reached some kind of event horizon situation on this book, where I can see my goal but can never quite reach it, no matter how much I do. My agent would like to have 100 pages of the novel to submit, but she uses a different font/format for submissions than I write with. I like to stick to my old way of formatting for writing because that's how I calculate pacing, and then when I'm doing my last round of revisions/proofreading, I change the font and format to my agent's preference, which then makes it look different, and that makes it easier to spot errors instead of going on automatic and reading what I think should be there. The problem is that it makes it difficult to tell how many pages I actually have. The way I'd calculated, based on the differences at other points in the story, I should have reached 100 pages by the other format, but when I reached my goal last night, I changed the font and found that I was only on page 89. So it looks like I have twenty more (or so) pages to write. I think. At least that should allow me to finish a chapter, which I was planning to do anyway. Then I'll change the font again and see where I am.

It's at least another day's work, which puts me a little behind my target schedule, but if I'm good and diligent and work as many hours as I did yesterday, I can do it. However, I've got dance class tonight (I may skip the jazz class and do that one next week) and then choir tomorrow, with a section rehearsal between children's choir and chancel choir, so I can't even brainstorm in the down time.

One thing I did yesterday that was a lot of fun was make up a slang vocabulary for one group of people in the story. I tried thinking about the things they might reference and how technical terms from their work might sneak into other usage. I had the good sense to write down my terms as I came up with them, so I'm gradually building a slang dictionary for this world. The trick will be to not incorporate these terms into my own vocabulary once I start using them in writing -- at least, not until I'm actively promoting the book. Then maybe I'll let it go viral by using these terms.