I just noticed that after Chapter XXVIII I restart the numbers at XXIV instead of XXIX. One simple typo and my chapter numberings are messed up for the rest of the book. And--aw man--I did it again in the XXXs. Clearly, Roman numerals are just too complicated for me to handle. Total chapters is actually 62(?) + 3 introductions.

Google Webmaster Tools to the rescue!

Okay, so I said I was going to edit, but then didn't do anything beyond that first day. Poo on me.

But thanks to Google Webmaster Tools, I've just found a quite significant error: Hilfa's real name is Hilfa. [Edit: WTF? Hilsa. Hilfa's real name is Hilsa.)

Apparently, the top (read: only) query for my website is 'hilfa fish'. Initially, I thought I was polluting the results for people wanting to learn about the type of fish knows as the hilfa, but a bit of checking reveals that it's actually knows as a 'Hilsa'. In fact, I knew this initially. There is exactly one occurrence of 'Hilsa' in the entire novel, her initial entrance in Day 4. The other one hundred (exactly) mentions of her name all call her 'Hilfa'.

I suppose I'll just to a simple replace, but maybe I'll later insert a running joke where Fin keeps calling her 'Hilfa'.

Or I could add a line or two where she explains (or the narrator explains) that her father'd had a tendency to mispronounce words, and he'd named her 'Hilfa' due to this. Nah. s/Hilfa/Hilsa/g;

(I seem to remember having trouble remembering how to spell her name while writing, but I guess I never looked back to the initial spelling and just settled on the wrong one.)

Okay, so I'm finally starting a bit of editing. I started by catting it all into one huge file. Then I went through updating the chapter titles to include chapter numbers and putting them in order. Just doing this made me realise, holy hell, this is long!

The chapter titles, of course, hae some problems. 'Deadlines Approaching' refers to me being nearing midnight, not something happening in the story. 'A Noisy Arrival in a Noisy Town' turned out not to have the arrival, which ended up happening in 'For Real This Time'.

There is no Chapter XXXXIII.


Then there's the actual content. Chapter II needs bit of fixing up. Chapter III needs to be scrapped or rewritten in full or something. Chapter XVII has to exist, but needs to be much, much better and well-thought-out. What else? I don't know. Lots.

When I awoke this morning, I moved my lapop back up onto my desk as I always do.

It turned off.

It's been doing this a lot lately. According to my sources, it has a broken pin that needs resoldering. Luckily, so long as I don't bump the cord, it's not a problem, so I just plugged it back in so I could turn it back on and all would be fine until I moved it again tonight.

Only, this time it decided it was really screwed for good. It won't stay powered for more than a few seconds. I have around two hours of battery time to use when I'm ready, and then it's gone until I disassemble, solder a pin on the motherboard (I've never soldered anything before), and reassmeble.

I sohuld point out that:
* Compaq notebooks have apparently been plagued with this problem since 2004 or before.
* The fuckers, as of 2005, had not yet said 'Hey, let's fix our goddamn soldering process'.
* Compaq is the devil.

So, anyway, my 500MHz Linux box is quite slow with anything graphical. Normally I wouldn't need anything graphical, but I do for Blogger. Or, Elinks wasn't working. No DOM. Makes for very limited JavaScript support.

Also, [almost] all my text versions of my NaNo were only on the laptop, so getting them to verify was a pain.

I got 49997 and had several contenders for hte last three words:
* 'The bloody end.'
* 'To be continued...'
* 'Compack bleeding sucks.'

I went with the second, but let me make this perfectly clear: Compaq bleeding sucks.

The Day's Text
Words today: 374
Words total: 50000
Target total: 46666.666 repeating

124.666 more per day or (more likely) 374 tomorrow. Plus a little bit over.

The volcano story was shorter than I anticipated. But it's cool. A short bit of Sylvia tomorrow, then perhaps some fiddling about. Hilfa's age is the only thing that I know needs fixing (beyond a few typos I've noticed), but I'd like to insert mentions of these nozzles being dragged around by the army.

The Day's Text
Words today: 728
Words total: 49626
Target total: 45000

Again, next to nothing before midnight. But enough after. This morning, I needed 411.2 words per day. Now I need 275.5. Gaining!

I discovered there's no Chapter XXXXIII. Nothing really fits in there. Maybe an additional Sylvia chapter, but at this point, I think the historic volcano will take more words than I need, so volcano+ending Sylvia+XXXXIII Sylvia = lots of words.

The Day's Text
Words today: 954
Words total: 48898
Target total: 43333.333 repeating

I believe I wrote under a hundred words before midnight, but then I stayed up really late, like, until now (4:20am here) writing. Got lots done. More than half.

In addition to getting a fair bit written, I now have a aside to write: The tale of the volcano. Lots of kissing and not enough swordfights. Turns out at the end that you can't stop a volcano with just toothpicks. (But maybe that you can with a trained military battalion.) Perhaps the volcano is Kukukillapacawowdomingobarajibjab. But probably not.

I only have two things left to write, though:
Volcano
Silvia

1 028 words each. Volcano will have to be long, because I don;t think Sylvia will be.

Also, I think the volcano aside will be inserted as Chapter XXXXVI, bumping up the other two.

The Day's Text
Words today: 2073
Words total: 47944
Target total: 41666.666 repeating