91,127

The word count, so far, for Jeremiah Jericho: Forty-Two. Book two of my trilogy.

It's a YA (young adult), urban fantasy (fantasy in an urban setting) novel. The word count is high and I expect to finish Forty-Two at 100,000 words. Why? because I like thick books. I've read YAs that I didn't want to end and thought could be a little meatier.

Agents might be turned off by that and that's fine, but I can't trim what I feel is necessary for the story to function as awesome. I'm of the mindset that a story takes as many words as needed to be told. One agent told me maybe I should make it more books.

Uh, no.

I don't want a series. I want a trilogy. I want it to stay that way. After I finish this trilogy, I have my mind set on a second trilogy with Jeremiah Jericho.

I don't mind books with big word counts. I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and that's 500+ thousand. (Word counts I mention are found here.) Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is 174,269 and that's one of my favorite books. As long as the words are used wisely, I don't think the word count matters.

I'm aiming for that idea with my word count. I'm not aiming for the general idea that bigger is better. I want the quantity of my words to be high quality through and through.

Forty-Two sits at a lower word count than the first book. Which is my goal. 

Funny thing about Allowance, I finished it 130,000+ and after a year of edits (and that sounds long, but it's not 365 days of straight editing, it's just a time frame from when I started to when I finished...sort of) I'm down to 106,000ish. I'm very proud of losing 25,000 words. My word count goal had been about 100,000. I'm doing good. I'm proud of this accomplishment. 

Hello

I am wondering what I'm doing with a blog. What am I the writer of a novel that's not published writing a blog for? Also, not to mention the fact that I am someone who is in dire need of a pocket editor to sift through my mess to fix it pretty. Mainly because I'm a terrible grammar person. Yes. Just like I'm a terrible speller. And no that's not nearly as important for a writer to grasp perfectly as people think.

Yes. I know that it's good to understand grammar and spelling. I understand that I am not great at it. I am not stating that I refuse to learn or refuse to bother doing it right and grammar is useless. What I'm stating is that I make mistakes and do so accidentally. I say that because people like to point out my mistakes as if making them means I shouldn't be a writer. That's like stating an illegible scientist is too muddled in the mind to understand what they're illegiblely writing. Just because a scientist writes fives that look like S's or S's that look likes fives, doesn't mean they don't know what they're going on about. Just because a doctor smokes doesn't mean they don't get what health damage they're doing to themselves. They're able to state what's wrong with their words, not with their actions. Their actions on their health doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about. They can still understand that it's wrong, say it's wrong and yet still do the wrong thing knowingly.

I think I made a clearly muddy point.

I titled my blog after my novel. My screen name is my pen name. I know what that means. I'm not delusional to think that Googling J_Jammer doesn't bring up a whole slew of things that people will find questionable. It doesn't bother me. My method to my Salvador Dali madness is mine. Whether or not it's gotten doesn't much matter.

I have finished my novel Jeremiah Jericho: Allowance. I have been editing it a while. I feel there is something missing and I've whittled it down to a few things that I'm going back over and inserting. One of them was a new villain. Another is giving Christopher free famous phrases to latch onto for a nice little surprise for Jeremiah at the end.

I have started the second in the series, Jeremiah Jericho: Forty-Two. I wrote a few things a year ago. I edited it and fixed up a few bleh points. I'm now writing new material for it. I have mapped out where I want the story to go in a nice bit of pencil. I really can't wait to write the end. I really love the end. When I read Hunger Games: Catching Fire I was excited to read the cliffhanger ending. I loved it. Ever single word.

The reason I loved it so much was because people always state that it's not a good idea to write a cliffhanger in your book. She did it. I am going to do it. I don't care if you're not supposed to do it. If it works, it works. I'm going to make it work.

My inspiration for writhing Jeremiah Jericho is from the following books:

1. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
2. 1984 – George Orewell
3. The Princess Bride – William Goldman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
5. Animal Farm – George Orewell

These books are a huge influence on my writing. Some were before I read them. Figure that out.

I saw Salvador Dali's artwork for $19 (with a coupon) in Florida and I enjoyed it. I've seen some of his work before, but never have I delved into it. Not that I have soaked it in, I think that Jeremiah Jericho taps into that dream realm that Salvador Dali created with his defiant view on art. Though I don't paint or draw, his stance on art made me laugh because he did everything someone wasn't supposed to do and he did it because he saw things differently. I didn't like everything I saw by him, but I did love his reason for doing it.

Another influence before I knew who he was...fully.

Write your dreams. Dream your words. And may your soul inspire the ages.