First Book Draft Is Done

by Tom • Feb 28th, 2008 at 9:50 am •

I finished the last piece yesterday–a Tonica story about my father and his experiences in WW2 and how they impacted my life.

I did a word count and Riding the Hell-Bound Train will be around 92,000 words. It’s about 40% fiction, 15% memoirs and the rest either speculation or commentary. Twenty-five percent of the material has not been previously published anywhere. I had hoped for a bit more new stuff, but sooner or later you have to stop fooling around and start polishing the material you have written. It’ll be tough getting it all ready to submit by the first of April, but I’ll do my best to meet the deadline I set last November.

Thanks to all of the Urbanagora readers who have been supportive to me either in person or in email/chat while I’ve been putting this together–especially Augur (my word mechanic), Todd (the spark), and Exapno (the Irish Beauty of my entourage). I also appreciate the time and energy that my long-suffering Wives have expended in my behalf for the last year and a half while I’ve been training for my new vocation. I could not have done it without you.

Now, on to the editing and rewriting task….

Tom Trumpinski

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There Are 3 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Augur on 28 February 2008 at 12:26 pm:

    Tom, Congrats on passing that significant hurdle! As I recall, most of your posts, particularly the ones after you decided these were going into a book, were pretty solid. I know that since this is going into a book you’re going to be tempted to tweak and tweak and tweak the work, but I hope you’ll just give them a light polishing and get back to what you do so very well, writing new stories and posts!

    I’m happy to help with light edits as needed.

    Congrats again Tommy!

  2. Comment by tet on 28 February 2008 at 2:21 pm:

    I can resist the temptation. Trouble is, the mistakes that I make over and over again will have to be caught by someone else.

    When the proofreading editors get done, I’ll read the articles out loud, make any changes that need to be done, and put them to rest. I understand that the perfect is the enemy of the good sometimes.

    Still, sometimes I find that I used the word “mountain” three times in two sentences in Lonely Girl. I’m starting by rewriting the Tonica Days stories from mid ‘07–they’re surprisingly good, in spite of everything I have learned since.

    Two hours/day minimum, five days/week for the rest of my life, man. I got me a job. I heard about WF Buckley dropping dead at 82 in front of his writing desk–now I have something to aspire to.

    Tom

  3. Comment by thetodd on 29 February 2008 at 7:47 am:

    Congrats! You sound like you’re enjoying life and are very inspired by writing right now. Sounds great :)

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