I'm buzzing through Dragonfire, buzzing for me at least, I've got about 19,000 words now. My goal is no more than 75k and then hopefully edit down a bit from there. I have an ace up my sleeve in a decent ending place earlier in the tale.

I'm waiting for word on my latest revision for Cog. I know it won't be the last round though as Cog is too long as is. It's lost 5k, but needs to lose another 8k. The last revision added length, but it addressed the issues that intern, reader, and agent came up with. Unfortunately, most of those issues required more instead of less. I had to cut a bit of plot to at least have it be 5k less than the original manuscript.

I swear, wordcount is my eternal foe. My agent must have really liked the ms to take on an overlong novel.

My agent must have really liked the ms to take on an overlong novel.

So maybe it's not overlong?

This lost me a little after the .gif on top but it's a cool discussion of story structure.

A couple of blog posts today.

One on my agent's blog about Scrivener. [link]

And one on my blog about mocking books. [link]

My agent is shut down for submissions and is doing a series of guest posts to concentrate on catching up. I'm all for this :).

How many times do you/would you revise the same story before deciding that somehow it doesn't work?

I don't think I've ever given up on a story. I might rewrite it until it doesn't resemble the original.

Is it crazy to pick out pictures that kinda/sorta look like how you imagine the characters in your novel? Scrivener lets me paste in pictures so I did. It does help me a little when I come up with descriptions even if they don't really match exactly.

Gud, I'd say use whatever works for you.

But what do I know? my writing is strictly factual magazine artcles for a trade pub.

Lots of authors clip pictures to use as character inspiration. LOTS.

And erika, I think you have to revise a story until *you're* happy with it. If it doesn't sell after that, put it away for a while and work on the next thing.

I was reading something, somewhere (yes, I'm precise, aren't I?) where an author was quoted saying she was a re-writer - that she'd rewrite and revise until she had something she felt hit the mark.

Of course, this was someone (Judith Viorst perhaps - I read a long article on her) who had books published. I'm sure there are writers who are in a constant state of revision with nothing final.