Paksworld

A fancy way of saying that the manuscript just made 100,000+ words a few minutes ago, and thus made it to that mark by midnight of July 31.  Almost didn’t, but did.

In August, I need to throw at least another 20,000 words into the cauldron, stir vigorously, and start pulling out the things that don’t belong, adding the things that go in last or (confession time) were just forgotten,  and so on.  And so on.   Serious driving for daily words will continue until the 120,000 point–after that it’s revision, revision, revision,  which often means the word count goes up and down like a yo-yo.

What can I tell you?   I like how the story’s shaping.   It needs a lot of revision, but the skeleton’s basically sound (barring some places where the arm bone isn’t connected to the backbone, and the foot bones are three feet away from the ankle bone and so on.)   I think it will be  a good Vatta story.  The main characters have come back to life and feel real though one or two still have a big of haze at the edges.  (Not Ky.  Not Rafe.  Not Stella.)

The book has moved from the backstretch, where it was interfered with by sprinter-bred short story attempts, and is now on the turn toward home, though I can’t claim “homestretch” just yet.   It’s running smoothly at this point–10,000 words this past week, which is quite nice (the 3000 word day made my fingers hurt; I’m pretty much limited to 2000 on the day after day thing.)   I’m a little over 89,000 words right now, and it will reach 90,000 words today.   Getting that short story concern out of my mind really helped.   I can now hold the existing story (and what I know or surmise about the part that’s not written down yet)  in my head and see better where it wants to go, like a jockey who’s finally worked a horse out of a bad pocket and has open track in front.    The story-horse is on the bit, eager to get to the finish line.

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Sometimes when I agree to write a story for an anthology, I get the idea quickly, and the story rolls right out.  Novels don’t require “ideas”–they require a character who wants their story told.  But short stories for anthologies require an idea, because nearly always the anthology comes with a set of requirements: length and the date it should be turned in, but also thematic elements or tone or both that require coming up with  story that fits  it all in neatly.   Read the rest of this entry »