3668 words. Today was a very good day, especially considering that I intentionally kept my word counts low today, so this would have easily been a 5000-6000 word day if I didn’t review a few chapters that I had previously written.
Also, some good news.
After I finished yesterday’s post, I went upstairs to get ready for bed, I saw the “glimmer”!!!!
A glimmer is a term I coined. It’s when you are writing into the dark, have no idea what’s going to happen, and then suddenly you do. You don’t know EXACTLY what will happen, but you see all the threads you’ve made start to come together in a very inspiring and sometimes unbelievable way. And you know the exact path to the ending.
Your creative voice knows what it’s doing if you just trust it. However, that requires a level of faith that is hard to put into words.
This novel has been been a particularly challenging one for me. It wasn’t hard to write, but I wasn’t sure about the plot. I kept thinking “is this going to work?” But my creative voice brought everything together in a way that still continues to surprise me. This series is interesting for me in that I made some narrative choices with the first book that I had to carry through in the rest of the series. Those choices were mostly constraints, so I’ve had to work within them. This series also has a few experimental techniques. All of that takes time to do.
I said a few nights ago that I didn’t know what the final battle would be—ha ha, funny because I pretty much set the stage for the final battle in the first couple of chapters. I just didn’t realize it at the time.
Ironically, the reason I saw the glimmer was because I slowed myself down and started reviewing the earlier chapters I wrote, doing a final master loop before I finished. One of the chapters I reviewed yesterday was the spark I needed.
Now, if I wanted, I could dispense with my quota and just get the damn thing done. That’s what I would normally do, and I would probably finish the novel tomorrow or Friday in a mad dash. But I’m holding steady right now.
The main reason is that I had a 90-day break right at the middle of this book. When any time period longer than 2 weeks passes and you don’t make progress, you’d be amazed at how you forget little details. The more time passes, the more you forget. Your memory still retains the big picture, but you misremember little things like the colors of someone’s shirt or something a character said. This happens to me even though I’m pretty detailed with my outlines.
For example, a character tells my hero that they’ll meet him at a restaurant. Yet, I had that character show up at the hero’s house instead….that kind of thing would make a reader go “huh?”
Issues like this are easily fixed but you tend to have more of them when you take long breaks in the middle of your drafting. You especially notice it when, in a novel like this one, when you review a chapter from the first half immediately followed by a chapter from the last half.
Anyhoo, these aren’t big deals. Most writers would never share this even though we all deal with it in some form or fashion. When you write a book this long with this many characters, inconsistency is one of your great enemies.
Once the novel is done and edited, readers won’t notice. But I’ve learned over the years that it’s a good idea to slow down whenever you have breaks like that, especially as you’re coming up to the end.
ANYWAY, BUSINESS AS USUAL
The novel is sitting just shy of 58K, which is crazy. Book 1 was exactly 60K. This novel is like the Energizer bunny. It just keeps going and going and going…
I am on the cusp of the final battle, though. I’ll start writing it first thing tomorrow morning. It usually takes me two to three days to write the final battle and the ending, sometimes less depending on how inspired I am.
Progress-wise, I did 3668 words today, and I have reviewed the novel through Chapter 11.
The goal tomorrow again is to do a minimum of 2000 words and review at least 4-5 chapters. That will put me officially at 60,000 and the novel revised through Chapter 17. Chapter 17 is exactly where I left off on the novel when I stopped writing it a few months ago. That means I will have gotten the first half pretty much aligned with the second half. This means tomorrow can be the last quota day, honestly.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that I could finish the novel tomorrow, but more than likely I’ll finish it Friday or Saturday. It’s just a matter of time now. I’m in the final stretch.
And speaking of a matter of time…
DON’T FORGET TO VOTE
As promised, it’s time to vote for my next book. Do it here: https://forms.gle/qv9TmTUsA5cjep4t6
Sorry to the folks who tried to vote last night but couldn’t. Apparently I forgot to click a button to open the survey…
Voting ends tomorrow night at my bedtime, which is around 10PM.
PROGRESS SO FAR:
Rat City (Chicago Rat Shifter Book 2): 57,972 words.
Writing App Book: 16,900 words. Drafted and needs final touches.
Writing App Tool: 90% complete
Indie Author Confidential Vol. 6: Published.
