The first draft of part one is complete.
Numbers, for those of you who like such things:
- pages 976
- words 201,670
- paragraphs 6,143
- lines 23,206
Now you get to guess, in the course of writing this book, how many:
- beers were consumed
- times I said ‘fuck, I am insane‘
- farinaceous objects Kelley baked to stave off utter despair
- narrative techniques I invented.
Feel free to go wild. I will. (Think explosive decompression.)
Nicola Griffith 
Congratulations!
Awesome!! I don't think you're crazy, I think you're brilliant!
I'll have to get my calculator out and work on the beer tally…
Thank you. I have to just blink now.
I hear those celestial trumpets.. Fabulous!
Grats!
Matt! Hey! So I see The Mirage is turned in. Woo hoo! I've got all the Hild revisions to go, but, eh, that work can wait. For now, yay, I'm just so pleased this stage is complete.
Congradumalations!
•beers were consumed
24
•times I said 'fuck, I am insane'
1000 (I'm trying to low-ball on this)
•farinaceous objects Kelley baked to stave off utter despair
As many as it took. (now I'm going to go look up what farinaceous means)
•narrative techniques I invented.
Thats a tough guess, I really can't say but I do think you invented the word “farinaceous”. Seriously, that can't be a real word it totaly sounds made up.
tranceptor, you are so wrong about the beer! Wrong by a couple of orders of magnitude. Wrong about farinaceous too :)
Congrats! I would've said around 300 beers, but some of that may've been wine. Less on the 'Fuck, I'm insane,' but a few 'Fuck, I'm a GENIUS!' thrown in for good measure.
We've got a 'Crazy Dance Party' going on at the bronzebeta.com. I'll try to think of something appropriate to play on the jukebox. (Are there songs about starches? Hmmm…)
Dianne, if I didn't have psychotic self-belief I'd never have got this far with such an outrageous project :)
I bet there are songs about cake…
I'm guessing somewhere in the vicinity of 1352 beers, 304 farinaceous delights, and I can only wait to hear how many new narrative techniques will be revealed. :)
Yea for first drafts! Go you!! Congrats.
Jennifer, I think you're close to the mark :)
ssas, thank you!
That's more words than I've written since I re-started 2 years ago. I can't imagine constructing a viable story that is 200k long,
Flour power!
Congrats :)
Dane, it's a different kind of story for me: a child fromage three to eighteen, growing up while the world changes around her–wars, pestilence, famine, good harvest, murder, sex, kings and armies and priests…
Craziness. seriously Nicola. that word count! I am struggling – padding one slow word in front of another to get to the last full stop of my doctoral thesis. I have extreme respect for your amazing achievement.Lelx
Lel, and some of that was doing things like 'there would be war. There was. A year later…' If I'd written it all, oof, we'd be talking half a million words.
I hope the PhD progresses smoothly.
Congratulations, N!
Alex, thank you!
Superb! I cannot wait to read it. Cannot wait!
Kelly, it's printing. right. now.