Well that was fun.
This morning I sent the completed manuscript of Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? to Scott, my lovely editor.
I say ‘lovely’ – we’ve never met, but he says reassuring things about it, and his favourite line of the early draft I sent him was ‘parakeets are bastards’, so I think it’s safe to say we’re on the same wavelength, which makes him lovely in my book.
And I say ‘completed’, but as any writer will tell you, this is just the beginning. There will be edits, notes, comments, rewriting, more edits, notes, comments, rewriting, and so forth, until the finished manuscript is prised from my grasp. Someone clever once said ‘I never finish writing my books – they’re just taken away from me.’ If anyone can tell me who that clever person was, then do please share, because I’ve completely forgotten, and credit where credit’s due.
And then the book has to be made, which is a different story.
So even though the delivery of book to customer is still some way off, I thought I’d reassure you that I haven’t been idle, give you a progress report, and let you know you’re in my thoughts (especially those of you who have been asking ‘where’s my book?’ – you know who you are).
Meanwhile, here are some statistics.
This draft of Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? contains 73,736 words, which over the coming weeks will be reduced to nearer 70,000. Of those, 4,459 are ‘the’, 2,411 are ‘a’, and 1,842 are ‘and’. I’ve tried to fill the gaps in between those 8,712 words with more interesting ones, for example ‘appendage’, ‘cavorting’, ‘clumsybundle’, ‘dishwasher’, ‘egomaniac’, ‘excreters’, ‘flollops’, ‘goatsucker’, ‘heffalump’, ‘Luftwaffe’, ‘marijuana’, ‘nachos’, ‘omelette’, ‘perturbation’, ‘retroussé’, ‘sangfroid’, ‘Thucydides’, ‘underbellies’, ‘Walthamstow’, ‘xylophones’ and ‘zuzzing’, all of which appear just the once.
Scott will probably make me take them out now.
If you fancy a pointless game, see if you can guess how many times the word 'birds' appears in this draft (I have a horrible feeling it's far too many...). Nearest guess gets a signed copy of my first book, Waving Not Drowning.