The main reason it's been so long is because I've finally finished writing the first draft of my book. I actually finished it about two weeks ago. I printed it out, went to The Dollar General and bought some red ink pens and sticky notes, and have already started editing the manuscript in my spare time. Surprisingly, I have found very few mistakes so far, considering the fact that I have really bad ADD; the manuscript should be riddled with mistakes!
They use to call me learning disabled, but it was never really true. Selective learning is a better way to describe me. I could never fit in a mold; I never wanted to learn what the teachers taught me. I was only interested in what I personally wanted to learn at a particular time. When I learned to love to write, I would read dictionaries and grammar books in my spare time because I wanted to write well. It reflects in my writing. I never get "to", "too", or "two" mixed up. That's their land, and they're over there; I never mix my "their"s up either. I become obsessed with what I like to do and as a result, I'm successful.
However, I do have my problems. For example: sometimes I get stuck on an idea and will write a sentence or word twice without even realizing it. I also have typing problems: sometimes I write a sentence and I'll put a word in there that I didn't mean to. I my head I'm thinking "That's a nice shirt you've got on there" but I'll actually write "That's a nice skirt you've got on there". I'm convinced that my brain completely glitches out on a constant basis, and I make these mistakes all the time. I hate my keyboard too; I'll never get used to it; I think that's my main problem. A laptop's keyboard is strange to me; maybe the keys aren't big enough; I really don't know; it's been a problem from day one!
I'm done writing now; that's the big news. I printed out the entire 95,000 word document. A document that size prints out regularly on approximately 240 pages of printer paper, but when consolidated into a book it's slightly above normal for adult fiction. Length wise, it could be compared to between the second Harry Potter book [85,141 words= 351 book pages] and the third Harry Potter book [107,253 words= 448 book pages] . I'm no math expert but that puts me around 400 book pages. That's pretty impressive for me at least; I've impressed myself.
I'm glad it's finished. I'm glad I'm able to move on to editing and writing query letters to publishers and literary agents. We'll see where it all goes; I'm excited.
