I had originally planned on talking about this in the previous entry, but ultimately decided that it needed it's own post. I'm a NaNoWriMo winner! This shocks me because as I have previously stated, November usually sucks for me. I think there were a bunch of factors for this. First, due to the pandemic, I'm not really going anywhere beyond work and home. Second is that for whatever reason, all of the school related stress I usually have happened THIS WEEK instead of during November. Finally, it became a habit that I'm still kind of living with. With the exception of Election day, I wrote every day. I typically woke up at six, got to work around 6:45 and wrote until my first student walked in at around 7:30. I also wrote at home too, but that routine helped me big time. My final word count ended up being around 63,000 words. This excites me because Shrewdest Faction and War Distortion were both around this wordcount after several drafts. I've already thought of a few new scenes I'd like to add in addition to fleshing things out so I'm confident this book will be longer than both of those novels. That being said, this is the first time possibly ever that when I start my next draft, it will probably be in a fresh document. Typically when I do a new draft, I just write in a different color in the same Google Doc, but this manuscript is ROUGH. I know I wrote a whole book in 28 days, but it's just not flowing great for me. Hoping for better luck next draft. Now you are probably wondering a few things. Are you curious about why I haven't referred to the story by it's title? Well, I might be changing it again. I actually really like An Angel Among Us...but every time my students saw the tab open they were like, "OMG, IS IT ABOUT THE GAME, AMONG US?" and I twitched a little bit more each time they asked. It sucks because I totally was playing with the title of the song "Angels Among Us" ("Oh, I believe there are angels among us"), but I'm wondering if maybe "An Angel in Plain Sight or "An Angel on Earth" might be better. I wanted it to coordinate it with "The Devil You Know" which will be the title of book two. You might also be wondering why the title of today's post has the the word Phantom in it. Well, as I wrapped this draft up, I was reminded of a song from Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Weber. I looked the lyrics up and I was like "WOAH" and then I looked up a different song and said "THIS ALSO APPLIES" and holy crap there a few parallels. For one, a mask plays a huge role in my book (though not to hide a disfigured face, just for identity purposes) as well as the idea of someone always being there watching you: In sleep he sang to me, in dreams he came That voice which calls to me and speaks my name And do I dream again? For now I find The Phantom of the Opera is there Inside my mind It's like I'm back in the eighth grade listening to the soundtrack in my portable CD player. LOL. It's not a retelling by any means (There is no Raoul, unfortunately) but I might pay a little homage to the show in book two. Maybe I'll have the 2004 film version be Jane's favorite movie or something. :) Alright, I think that's it for me.
Kay
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