The State of the Union, Jill-Elizabeth Style

So yesterday I had a come-to-Jesus meeting with myself.  Now today, I’m doing what I said: filling you in on the Works in Progress. In case you aren’t up on your Jill-Elizabeth trivia, there are two major things that I’m hoping to finalize before year-end: a short story collection and a novel.  I’m going to hit the high points in bullet form.  It looks more impressive this way because it looks longer (teehee) and it’s exceedingly fast/easy for me to write like this because I used to have to write EVERYTHING in bullet points back in Corporate Days.

The Short Story Collection

• I have a working title that I *really* like and that has been vetted by two people (The Husband and The Writing Buddy), both of whom also seem to like it.
• I have a draft foreward written to explain the title and its connection to the stories.
• I have three stories (almost 11,000 words) finalized.
• I have one story (almost 7,500 words) nearly finalized; this story is being submitted as a contest entry very shortly AND has sequel(s) potential (hooray!).
• I have two more stories (approximately 10,000 words) in their first round of external edits.
• I have one very long story (approximately 13,000 words) in the midst of the first round of internal edits.
• I have one long story (currently over 9,250 words) that I started internal editing and then found I wanted to make longer/more in-depth, so am in the process of rewriting; this story has Novel Potential, so I may play with the length and use it as the teaser to set up a novel.
• [THAT”S 50,000 words, BTW – hooray!!]
• I would like to select two more stories from things I have to add to the collection, to round it out to ten total (and at least 60,000 words).  I have eight that I can choose from; each need a decent amount of work before they’re even ready for internal edits.

The Novel

• I have a title I *love*.
• I have ideas for two sequels, with one that I have already started work on; there is potential for more if I wanted to go that route AND it would make a fabulous film franchise that I have already started casting in my head (teehee).
• [This one is organized into sections, each of whom is narrated by one person.]  I have full first drafts of three characters (almost 67,000 words).  For clarification: two of the three are intro characters and their sections will not be as long; the other is the infamous Charlie and his section is WAY long.  I suspect he will get cut for this book, with the majority of his 200+ page chunk of the current draft becoming a free-standing companion novella.
• I am in the process of writing the remaining characters’ sections (currently have nearly 25,000 words).  One of these is progressing ala Charlie, and I suspect may lend itself to another companion novella.
• [THAT’S ALREADY 92,000 WORDS!  Granted, many of those words are coming out of the novel itself, but still – clearly, length is not going to be my problem here…]
• None of this has been edited (or even seen) by anyone yet.  I haven’t even read the entire Charlie section in its entirety; only read-as-I-wrote.  I’ve reread the two intro characters’ sections over since writing them, but haven’t done any editing yet.

So there you have it. The state of my union is surprisingly good. Honestly, I hadn’t even realized how good myself, til I saw it all in black and white like that.  I intentionally don’t keep running word files with all the components of the WIPs in one place; it’s too distracting to see word/page counts as I go.  It’s also too daunting when things aren’t going so well…  It’s much easier to deal with chunks – sections, stories – and leave the worries about final product aside.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to get everything perfect by year-end (perfection is a slippery little sucker…), but I feel like I should be able to accomplish my goal and have them out ready to go if I keep working apace.

HOORAY!