Done.

Guys. The first draft is done.
It weighs in at 127 pages, 36650 words, and it needs so much polishing and another 8K words if I wanna publish.
But the first draft is done.

100 pages!

 Look at this, guys! I have officially written a hundred pages.

 

That's 58% of the way to 50K words. 

I did another pie chart based on the end goal of 45K words, which is about the shortest you can still publish a novel. That gives me 65%.

Ahhh!

I'm unexpectedly upon the climax. Will I be able to stretch it and the denoument out into enough words to publish? Stay tuned to find out!

August update

GUYS. I just hit fifty percent. 25000 words.

Jimena has just showed up at Bryn Mawr to confront Lee.
In other news, I've sent my poetry chapbook in to four different poetry contests, a play to another, and a short story to another.
The short story contest tho. Here's a copy of the first paragraph of my cover letter.

I was extremely excited to discover Twisted Road Publications and its short fiction contest. Twisted Road’s tagline, “Bringing Marginalized Voices Into the Mainstream,” exactly describes what I aim to do with all my work. As a queer, chronically ill, feminine person, I have some experience with marginalization and feel very strongly about working to improve visibility and challenge common narratives. The Southern Gothic Anthology contest marries my mission to my style—the contest page’s description of Southern Gothic is the closest description of my genre that I have ever encountered. From childhood I’ve written tragedy-ridden depictions of people misunderstood by society, and have always struggled to find a niche for my work. Discovering that Dorothy Allison was the final judge was the absolute icing on the cake. I have greatly admired Ms. Allison’s work for several years now, and in fact wrote my college essay on my relationship with an essay of hers, “This Is Our World,” which put into words for the first time how I felt about the purpose of art: to challenge the viewer’s comfortable perception of their world.

This is not me trying to butter up the judges, this is pure enthusiasm. 

ERMAGERD SHINIES

So my queerplatonic partner is the BEST and I have just opened a package from em.

That's right, a cute little pride bracelet. But GUESS WHAT? They're INTERCHANGEABLE.

IT GETS BETTER

THIS ONE IS SPARKLY

THIS ONE'S ABOUT LESBIANS

THIS ONE MIGHT BE MY FAVORITE
IT'S THE GENDERFLUID FLAG

And last but not least, I figured ey wouldn't mind if I wrote my pronouns on this one since I have lots of rainbows to leave unmarred.

Mandala update

 

I made more! I took the color schemes for each character and shamelessly stole celtic knot patterns made of three strands off the internet and colored them. I tried to post this like two days ago but Blogger was giving me trouble.

Today's update: I wrote the scene last night. HALLELUJAH I WROTE THE SCENE. 

Guys I am so close to 45% I can taste it.

Character mandalas

So I'm stuck in a giant plot hole, right? This is the scene where Lee and Nadie call Jimena, the first time our heroes are (sort of) in the same room together. The scene where Jimena calls the outcome of the romantic subplot, and tries to explain to Leandra how they're going to eat each other alive, but only succeeds in driving them away. But I can't figure out how to write the scene so she'll get that, on account of Lee and Nadie get along really well. 
So I colored mandalas of all of them.

 

Nadie "all that glitters is not gold" Jones

 Jimena "what you see is what you get" Navarro

Casey "don't call me pretty"

I kind of love them. Maybe I can do a design with the color schemes of all of them, so I can metaphorically pluck out why they do and don't work?

Summer Update

I finally have a week free, and I'm devoting it to the Art. I have a box full of things from the school year to look into, but primarily I'm working on the novel and attempting to get four other things published.
I got a chance to read the new Poets & Writers, which is about contest-entering. I circled some contests, and this time I've gotten so far as to look into the work each publisher puts out. A lot of them I have to buy, and I was stuck in the conundrum of that basically doubling how much cash I'll have to invest in this venture (the first half being reading fees). And then I noticed that one of the publishers sells through Barnes & Noble, and it was like a lightbulb. I have a Barnes & Noble card leftover from Christmas with more than enough cash on it to cover three publishers' worth of work. So I only had to spend $8 of my own money on one publisher that doesn't sell through B&N.
Also I got to 39%!

And 34 percent!

I did 4% and almost 2K in a single sitting! When I say I've been writing every day, I mean I've been writing a sentence to a page every day. This is a really good session, and I'm only stopping because I'm approaching the kind of tired where basic vocabulary eludes you.
In other news, I've finally re-reached the point where I can play guitar for longer than 15 minutes without giving up out of finger pain + frustration. I don't know how beginners are expected to play for half an hour at a time, three times a week. Steel strings bruise your fingers but good before the calluses come in. I started reading Passing Lines, and now I have a decent idea of Puerto Rican gay culture and where trans culture is likely to fit into that. Boring interny stuff now pretty much done. Of the two issues I had of Poets & Writers to catch up on, I finished the earlier one and I read through the classifieds of the second one. Seriously, they have so many contests, conferences, publishing companies etc. in the back of that magazine. It's awesome. I started looking into some of them.
I wish I had a decent sense of how long this novel is going to be. There's a contest for a novel, which doesn't have to be finished, just has to have a synopsis written and be projected to be over 65K, whose deadline is at the end of the month. How should I know if this is going to be over 65K until I'm done with it? How does one estimate such things?

30 percent!

I have reached 30% of said novel. I am very excited. This calls for celebration.

It's probably gonna be longer than 50K just because I've only just gotten to the scenes where Nadie and Leandra get to know each other. I like them. Nadie is gas and Leandra is a sparker, and together--fire.
Other news. I am teaching myself to play guitar with correct fretting technique this time, and now feel as though I don't know how to play at all. Is very frustrating. Most of my muscle memory--useless.
I have basically discovered that if you want my news in mostly sensible, continuity-heavy, long posts that read like chapters of a story in that they're mostly related to what happened before, you should stay here. If you like them in shorter chunks, don't mind me commenting on feminism, random other story ideas, trans* and NB resources, and a hell of a lot on asexuality; enjoy watching me get excited about random things, and like a consistent update schedule, you should follow me on tumblr.
My boring interny stuff is closer to being done but is still not done, same with the shopping stuff and reading through Poets & Writers. Dang, but that's a long magazine.
Also! I don't usually put fanfiction here, but! Aro/ace Natasha Romanov! Heterosexual biromantic Sam Wilson! The soulmate trope suddenly making sense!