For those of you interested in the continuing novel-writing process (and I realize I sound a little OCD about the whole thing and maybe I am and maybe I don’t care):
I’m at page 190, close to 45,0000 words. I’ve written eight chapters, and I have seven more to do. (Unless some little surprise voice pops up in my head and demands to be heard.) Yesterday I wrote 3,100 words and today I finished another 1,100 by noon, so I believe I have some sort of momentum going.
But I don’t think I will officially hit my stride until I finish the next three chapters which are going to be extremely difficult. They will be a challenge because I have to figure out the voices of three new characters, two of whom are completely foreign to me (but challenges are good! and important!), and also I have to do some research, and also sad things will happen, which means I might get a little sad in real life too.
If there were any way I could finish these three chapters over the course of July I would be super excited because I think the rest of it will be far easier to write, and the words will simply rush out of me like some metaphor I refuse to come up with right now because I am saving all the good ones for my book. It will be easier in the final third because I’ll be using the voices of characters I have already created and I pretty much know how I want it all to end.
But I don’t think I can finish the first draft by end of summer. That’s like, another 150 pages in two months. (Maybe if I were on Adderall, like all those punk-ass bloggers out there, but I don’t think anyone wants to see this old lady on Adderall.) I will keep that as a goal anyway because it is good (and important!) at this point in the process to have specific writing goals.
In the beginning it is fine to write without judgement. But if you’re more than halfway through your book and you don’t know what it’s about and how to make your vision for it happen, you might be in trouble.
I don’t think I’m in trouble. But I have to stay focused. No distractions this summer, thank you very much.
