Halfway, baby!

I'm halfway through the first draft of Steam. Wahoo! That means I'm tracking to my goal which is the first time I've ever done that with a novel. My little "about" box always said when I was planning to finish the book, then people would ask me about it, and I'd have to change it. I think once I just let it ride from one Christmas to the next. ;) Outlining is a wonderful thing.

So is Page Four. If any PC users out there feel like their head is gonna explode trying to write a novel in Word, I suggest Page Four. You'll love it. I can jump around between chapters now, and merge them when I need to, and search for overused phrases and do a word count of all the chapters even when they're in separate docs - no more word count math! Plus, always good to keep the brain firmly in place inside the skull.

Right now, I'm on my deep sea creature scene, so I've been watching Deep Blue Sea with the kids (they love it!) and looking through books about the deep sea trench. I'll leave you with this picture of a cuttlefish from my new favorite blog, Aqua Marine Discovery. Cuttlefish are cephalopods, like octopus and squid, but kinda cute, intelligent enough that you can train them to do tricks in their cages, and they do fun things like communicate by changing the color of their bodies. There are days that sounds like a fabulous idea. Green for 'sure kids, have another piece of candy' and red for 'if I hear you ask me for that one more time...'