130k

I've reached the 130,000-word mark on "Confessions," and got myself out of a thorny patch of writing while doing so. I was afraid that I'd blundered into a hopeless meander that was going to hurt like hell when I decided to junk the whole thing and start from a previous point, but then lo and behold, the words I needed to tie it back into the storyline from a perspective that made sense both stylistically and thematically just seemed to pop into my head, so I madly jotted down the resolution before Mrs. Exile and the little one came to pick me up from work yesterday (lest I lose it between then and the next chance I get to write).

So in honor of the new milestone, I saved an archival copy to the hard drive and opened it up as a 12pt, double-spaced document -- it took about twenty minutes for my old Pentium III to process the damned thing, but when all was said and done the manuscript weighed in at 482 pages! If I were to clean up the text and put in things like chaper breaks I'm sure it would bring the grand total to a nice big and round 500, but that sort of thing will have to wait until the entire first draft is complete. Apologies to my wife, who has been reading the unedited mess thus far!

Update: Hmm. My work desktop seems to think "Confessions" is 467 pages. Must be the font. Ah, well. This is why I go by word count!