House on Hickory Hill

Okay, if you look to the right you will notice I have updated the word count for my camp novel, House on Hickory Hill.

I wrote over 200 pages this summer longhand and I literally just got finished typing them up yesterday. I took a lot of breaks.

You'll also notice I am over my 90,000 word goal but the thing of it is, is that I am not finished.

Whether you knew or not, this is how I have my book setup:

Prologue
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Epilogue

Each day is divided up into smaller, numbered sections. All the days are finished except Monday needs to be finished and Tuesday hasn't even been written. There are huge gaps between Sunday/Monday and Friday/Saturday because I wrote all of this at different time periods. There are many inconsistencies that I, unfortunately, have to work out. I changed a lot of my ideas around specifically one big one: originally this was Andy's (main character's) first year at camp. I decided it would work a lot better if Andy is returning to camp a second time after a one year hiatus. So he worked there the summer he was 18 and now he is returning as a 20-year-old. It's great because he left a bit of a legacy and everyone is so glad he's back. And then around Wednesday the shit hits the fan.

This book has a lot going on because there was a lot I wanted to put in it. I wanted to reach a wide audience. There's something for everyone: love, sex, action of all sorts, friendship, humor, morbidity, mindfucks (in a way), suspense, mystery, lore of all sorts, etc.

It's packed but not saturated or overwhelming, I feel.

So this isn't even draft 1. This book is in all sorts of forms. I've gone through Monday/Sunday/Wednesday/ and parts of Thursday already. So those parts are practically on draft 2. The latter part of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are all first drafter. Monday needs a lot of work. And Tuesday is currently nonexistent. The epilogue has been written on paper but there are a lot of changes I want to make to it.

So I would say, after writing the epilogue, finishing up Monday, and writing Tuesday, I will have over 100,000 words so about 400 or so pages. Then editing is going to be long and arduous because of all these inconsistencies. Not to mention my writing has improved dramatically over the two years I've been writing this (started in 2006 when I was at the actual camp this is based off). It is hands down the largest undertaking I've done in terms of writing.