Chapter 33, 93k

I didn't write the rest of the weekend after my marathon session Friday night into Saturday morning, which will certainly go down in the history book for me as far as my "adventures in writing" go. It was fun, and I was so incredibly absorbed in the story that I just couldn't put it down. Afterward, though, I realized I very much needed to put it down and focus on something else for a while. Helps in maintaining balance, good health and all that sort of thing. We can write too much, as well as too little. I think I wrote 54k words last week. Enough already! That's Nano in a week! I should call it "WeekMo" and get other maniacs to sign up. We'll form our own little club, the "People Who Hemorrhage So Bad When They Write It Ain't Funny Club". We might even get a tax deduction for it, although our insurance premiums will probably skyrocket. ;-)

Last night I was back at it again (Tuesday night) and I wrote another large bunch of stuff, apparently about 12k words in 4.5 hours, minus a couple of short breaks, again right on track with what seems to be my going rate for words per minute and per hour (about 45/min, 2750/hr). It's interesting that I had gotten worried during my short hiatus that maybe what I had written was going to come falling down around me. I felt I had done so much so quickly, maybe it wasn't as solid as it seemed at the time (one of those, "oh-my-gosh, whatever was I thinking" moments, paired with "it seemed like a good idea at the time"). I was truly worried. However, I picked up right where I left off without missing a beat and hammered out more truly intriguing new stuff.

I'm rewriting the story, keeping the same basic idea of it all, but allowing creativity to take over. Although this is still coming out like a first draft, which in effect it really is, still there is much more control and it holds together very well. It's far more solid than my actual first draft. I'm avoiding going back and reading and editing what I wrote, but I had to glimpse back a little, and what I saw left me feeling very satisfied.

I don't want to give any of the new twists and turns away, and there are LOTS of new twists and turns to keep things interesting. However, I wanted to mention, since I think it's very funny, that the concerns that fueled my "what have I done?!" moments were solved by looking at a short bit of two different shows on TV the other evening. One was an episode of Star Trek TNG, the other the documentary that was on this past week about the Illuminati. Neither of these had anything whatsoever to do with my story in any direct way, but when I saw what each was about, I realized they did sort of almost parallel my story in an indirect and unconnected sort of way. The point was, I said to myself, "if they have the b***s to tell these stories, then I should not worry about it -- I can certainly tell my story." In other words, I got a lot of confidence that the limb I had gone out on was no farther "out there" than some of the limbs I see others going out on all the time. I took heart, gathered courage, and let myself dream.

And oh, what a dream!

Again, I was so wrapped up in the story that I could barely force myself to stop when I finally had run out of time to write. The hours flew by. I love to be so wrapped up in my writing like that. Tremendous focus, tremendous involvement, feeling literally as though I were experiencing it myself. Hopefully it will have at least some of that same sensation for the Reader.

I'll keep at it, and hope to finish the draft within a few more days this week. It's turning into another 120k draft, but that's okay. It is what it needs to be. I can still try to whittle it down.

I had hoped to finish this draft within April. I made slow going of it for several weeks there, so that set me behind, but I'm catching up and it won't be that late, only by a few days. Not so sure now that another complete draft is inevitable. I'll have to wait and see. There is so much solid stuff here that this might actually be something I can just edit into shape. It will depend. However it goes, if I keep the new twists and turns, then I want to edit this enough that I'm comfortable to share it, and then share it with a few Beta Readers. If I decide to alter the story significantly yet again, then I'll have to do a rewrite before I can share it. Too soon to know for sure. Need to finish it first, then have a look back at it.

In the meantime, my fingers are itching for this story to be FINISHED so that I can get the next one finished and then the next one and then the next one ....

Best wishes to everyone else trying to get their novels finished!

Adrian

[Note: Blogger acting up, had to republish this post!]