I love that spring has finally showed it’s face around here. I went out today to run some errands, wearing a light jacket and ended up taking that off as I was far too warm. It may now stay like this for, well, forever. I’m not greedy at all, am I? 🙂
Well, it’s been a good weekend so far, with much accomplished and I’m rather impressed with something I’ve managed to do. I’ll get to that part in a minute, though you might have a few guesses on your mind already if you’re a regular reader of this blog and are looking at the title. Write them down and check your answers at the end to see if you were right. I think we’re supposed to call that the home version of this game show. Wait, what do you mean I’m not running a game show here? Oops.
I’ve been quite productive this weekend with The Nine, and as I’m still pounding away at the other keyboard, I suspect that it will come to a relatively stellar total. Maybe I’ll update later with the finals. We’ll see. In case you were wondering, this is just a short commercial break to let the brain prepare for more scenes. Yes, it really is going well.
One of these days I’m going to learn to stop navel-gazing and moaning about how things are going. It seems to change every time I do. Yesterday was a good day, with Chapter 4 being written in it’s entirety, totalling 4,304 words. Today, so far, I’m 2,457 words into Chapter 5, and I fully expect to have it finished by the end of the day, likely in the 3.5-4k range also. The whole thing seems to be flowing well, which makes me happy as we all know. I’m definitely having fun with it, but I must say, I’m a little startled at what happens when you piss Tavis off, even when he’s restraining himself. Note to self, don’t do that.
(Update: Okay, so now I’m done writing for the night, and I’m impressed. Yes, you read that right, I’m impressed with myself. The final total for today (Sunday) was 5,123, which brought the overall total, something I neglected to give earlier, to 21,995. Yes, I just pole-vaulted over the 20k milestone. I’m flying! Okay, clearly I have had too much chocolate cake. I’m going to bed now, if I can just get my eyes closed.)
I am, however, starting to think this one will be longer than the other two. Okay, that’s not news. I knew it was going to be longer, but this is looking like more than I expected. You see, I’m a stone’s throw from 20k at this point, and maybe a fifth of the way through the outline. Worse (or better, depending on how you look at it), some of the later parts of the outline are deceptive in their appearance. I know they’ll take more words and pages to tell than other parts that look just as long in the outline. Now, I don’t really give a rat’s ass how long the first draft is because it will be as long as it takes to tell the story. This is something I’ve generally gone with. Beyond that, I think that Bound at least is going to get longer when I plug in the results of the feedback I’ve received on it. Also, they’re all well short of being even average length for the fantasy genre, so it’s not like there isn’t room for them to be longer than they have been. I guess it’s just a little daunting to think of how far I still have to go, how much I still need to write. Yes, I know I’ve only been at this for 6 days. That’s not the point. And the peanut gallery can stop pointing out that I’ve done the manuscript-length navel-gazing exercise before only to be wrong. I realize that too. I don’t care, I’m going to do it again. Of course, I think that the main reason that the length thing isn’t bothering me as much this time is that I know how much I have going on in this book, and that, being the end of the trilogy, I have a lot to wrap up and/or pay off.
So, obsessive introspection aside, why am I so proud of myself, since it’s clearly not because of how much I’ve written? It’s simple. Today I had to go back into the manuscript for Possession to check specific details, in order to maintain consistency, because I have a piss-poor memory. Trust me, it’s bad. In any case, we all remember that Possession is in the drawer and I’m not supposed to be editing it while I’m busy writing the first draft of The Nine, right? Yeah, talk about testing my willpower. I was absolutely sure I was going to fail that test too. I will not lie to you guys and say that I wasn’t tempted. I was MIGHTILY tempted by a number of tweaks and small rewordings. I seriously wanted to wrap myself back in that book and read it over again, end to end. I didn’t though. I resisted. I managed to find what I needed, barely read anything else, and close the document without making a single change. You may all now applaud my self-restraint. I know I am. Of course, I’m fairly certain that I’m going to have to go in again before I’m done this draft, and I worry each time that I’m getting closer to breaking down and just editing, because I know this self-control thing can’t possibly last, but I’ll jump off that bridge when I get there.
And, finally, the picture of the day. I honestly don’t remember taking this one, I don’t remember it turning out this well either, blurry wire across the foreground aside. I told you I have a piss-poor memory. On that note, I’m running back to Tavis now. Enjoy.
Word Flows 