{"id":6118,"date":"2009-06-14T21:09:19","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T02:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/06\/14\/i_officially_begin_writing_merlin_s_shad\/"},"modified":"2009-06-14T21:09:19","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T02:09:19","slug":"i_officially_begin_writing_merlin_s_shad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/06\/14\/i_officially_begin_writing_merlin_s_shad\/","title":{"rendered":"I Officially Begin Writing MERLIN&#8217;S SHADOW"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Merlin&#8217;s blade is gone.<\/strong>  Whither has it gone?  You&#8217;ll have to read book one to find out.  You have a guess, you say?  You may be right in your guess, but the question is HOW does it happen?  And why?  And what will be the result?<\/p>\n<p>(S.D. Smith, you&#8217;re not allowed to answer these questions! Shhhhh&#8230; )<\/p>\n<p><strong>Either way, I have composted my plot for book two to the point that I can now officially begin growing words from its fertile soil!<\/strong>  I had previously authored three scenes, and these put me already at a nice 3% toward my goal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What are my expectation for this book?<\/strong>  While my last book finished out at a bloated 154,000 words before I sliced it down to 120,000, this book will be purposefully slimmer.  Using my writing plan and log, I calculate:<\/p>\n<table width=\"90%\">\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Total Words:<\/strong><\/td>\n<td align=\"right\">88,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Total Pages:<\/strong><\/td>\n<td align=\"right\">370<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Total Chapters:<\/strong><\/td>\n<td align=\"right\">33<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Total Number Of Scenes:<\/strong><\/td>\n<td align=\"right\">99<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Half-way Point Expected On:<\/strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/td>\n<td align=\"right\">Sep 10, 2009<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><strong>Calculated Finish Date:<\/strong><\/td>\n<td align=\"right\">Dec 10, 2009<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><strong>That should help me keep my manuscript to a reasonable length!<\/strong> If my imagination pushes it up around 100,000 words, that would be great.<\/p>\n<p><em>As time goes on, you&#8217;ll be able to check my progress in the sidebar.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>So the question for this new book is this:  <strong>What exactly is Merlin&#8217;s Shadow?<\/strong>  There is actually more than one answer to this question, which is what makes the book&#8217;s title so appropriate. Here&#8217;s a hint for one of the answers:<\/p>\n<p><center><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.EpicTales.org\/images\/robert\/Merlins_Shadow.jpg?w=1200\" alt=\"Merlin's Shadow by Robert Treskillard\" title=\"Merlin's Shadow by Robert Treskillard\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Who is this you ask?<\/strong>  (No, it&#8217;s not Merlin.) Despite the ferocity and pure evil of this picture that I have imagined and created, this is not a book filled with horror.  My goal is that when you read this book&mdash;you will weep.  Weep at the horror that man can stoop to.  Weep at the depth of evil in our own hearts.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>The nice thing about writing again<\/strong>, is that tomorrow will be exactly one year to the day from when I finished draft 1 of Merlin&#8217;s Blade!  <\/p>\n<p><strong>That means I spent an entire year editing<\/strong>.  That may seem long, but being my first book, I had a lot to learn.  This new book, with the Lord&#8217;s help and favor, should be decidedly faster in both writing and editing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Off to my inkpot!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Views: 23<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-summary\">\nMerlin&#8217;s blade is gone. Whither has it gone? You&#8217;ll have to read book one to find out. You have a&hellip;\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/2009\/06\/14\/i_officially_begin_writing_merlin_s_shad\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;I Officially Begin Writing MERLIN&#8217;S SHADOW&rdquo;<\/span>&hellip;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,15,9,51,28,36,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-merlin-spiral","category-2-merlins-shadow","category-announcements","category-editing-fiction","category-on-writing-fiction","category-progress-reports","category-thirst-methodology","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67v0M-1AG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.epictales.org\/treskillard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}