Title: YIPEEEE! Finished my first chapter of Bandit, Finished reading Tangerine

Hi all, Sorry I’ve been M.I.A. for the last couple of days. I just got finished reading this excellent book called Tangerine by Edward Bloor. It’s about a boy name Eric Fisher who moves to Tangerine Florida with his parents in order to start a brand new life in another town. But as soon as they get settled in, mysterious things starts to happen in Tangerine that Paul can’t figure out, including an incident that involves his older brother Erik and those mysterious glasses that he wears all the time in order to help him see…

I’m just going to leave it at that. It’s a really good book. I’ve decided not to give anything else away in case you want to read the book.

In other news, I’m very excited about what’s going on in my life right now. After trying to rewrite The Electric eel Bandit (and failing because of the story’s premise about underwater creatures and the whole human/shape shifter scenario) and months of being stuck on what to do next, I finally managed to write the first chapter (and third rewrite) of The Electric eel Bandit (A.K.A Bandit) and I LOVE it!!!!! It’s totally better than the first and second drafts and I’m constantly writing down all the stuff I need to work on after I finished the third draft.

In case you’re confused, here’s what I plan to do.

After I write the third draft of chapter one, I plan on going back to chapter one and rewriting it again (which would make a fourth draft for the story) but I’m only going to do this ONCE. If I rewrite the fourth draft and realize they’re something missing that I should have put in sooner, I’ll make a note of it and move on to chapter two. I plan on doing the same thing with chapter two, chapter three, four etc…until I reached chapter fifteen.

Third rewrite of Chapter One + rewrite = Fourth draft of Chapter One
Third rewrite of Chapter Two + rewrite = Fourth draft of Chapter Two

You see where I’m going with this?

In case you’re wondering where the third rewrite came from, I had already completed and rewrote this novel one (There was the first draft and then I rewrote it which left the second draft for the novel) and now I’m in my third rewrite of the novel but by the time I’m finished, I will have the third and fourth rewrite of the novel DONE. Isn’t that amazing??? Although I’m excited about writing and rewriting my novel, I would strongly not recommend this to people who have not completed a manuscript. If you can handle writing and rewriting the first and second draft of your manuscript, then so be it. But if you write (and rewrite) the first and second drafts of chapter one to the point where you want to scream you might want to take a long-winded vacation…

I’m just saying…

Moving on, here is my system on how I plan to write my novel according to the page count:

Chapter One = twenty pages
Chapter Two = twenty pages
Chapter Three = twenty pages
Chapter Four = twenty pages
Chapter Five = twenty pages
Chapter six = twenty pages
Chapter Seven = twenty pages
Chapter Eight = twenty pages
Chapter nine = twenty pages
Chapter ten = twenty pages

The total of Chapter one through ten: two-hundred pages or 50,000 words when you divide it by 250 words per page.

This is one option for me if I want to make my novel shorter. Depending on the plot and characters of the novel, I could possibly go with this option. However, I think that what I’m writing about is much bigger than ten chapters could possibly hold. In that case, I’ll continue on with my list.

Chapter eleven = twenty pages
Chapter twelve = twenty pages
Chapter thirteen = twenty pages
Chapter fourteen = twenty pages
Chapter Fifteen = twenty pages

The total of Chapter one through fifteen: three-hundred pages or 75,000 words.

I’m stopping between two-hundred and three-hundred pages when it comes to this book more or less. No matter what the page count is between the numbers above, I know one rule I have decided not to follow until I’m well established in the publishing industry to pull it off: I WILL NOT write any YA novel that’s over four-hundred pages (Also known as over 100,000 words if you’re paying attention to word count). That’s what I did with my second draft and it ended up being a total mess. I can’t even look at it anymore. What was I thinking? In the end, I’d rather be safe then sorry. I stick to the word count like the literary agencies and publishers want so they’ll be able to read my fourth draft without having a question mark in their head on whether they should represent me or not.

Dominique

P.S. I finished my journal entry on chapters ten through twelve in my notebook Moved on to chapter thirteen. Don’t know when I’m going to be able to post them online but all I can say is that it’ll be soon…