Small house = sewing machine and all notions must be put away out of sight until people aren’t in and out for parties and dinners. So over the holidays I focused on my writing and took some time away from sewing and quilting.
At this point in my novel (65K words) I’m doing a lot more adjusting than I am actual typing. My family probably thinks I’m nuts. I just stare at my computer for what seems like hours, barely touching the keys.
In fact at one point the word count decreased from 64K down to 62K in a day, but then I decided someone needed a luxury vacation to Grand Cayman, the characters, not me. Then I rewrote the entire ending. That was a fun day of “Oh crap! Did I just make the biggest mistake ever?!” It took me about two weeks to be okay then finally happy with the new ending. The old one is still tucked away safely if I ever decide to go back.
This is the not-so-fun part of writing. The part I’ve gotten stuck on before and junked the whole thing. You see I have this goal in my brain of 100K words. Publishers don’t usually take smaller submissions unless you are an established author writing a novella (aka mini novel) as a teaser or something for your upcoming full length novel. Ha! I haven’t even been published.
So I have this goal in my brain and for some reason I get stuck around 60-70 thousand words and can’t move on. This story is framed from beginning to end — YES I have an ending (first time ever!), but there’s still stuff missing. Problem: I’ve read it so many times I don’t know what else it needs.
Also for the first time ever I’m sending this baby out to a few friends for some constructive I’ll-be-in-the-corner-in-a-ball-waiting-for-them-to-hate-it criticism. (I admittedly have confidence issues with my writing) When am I sending it? They are asking the same thing. When I’m sure there aren’t any huge what-the-heck-just-happened holes in the story. So I’m publicly making it known I will send the two-thirds done novel out this week. I’m never gonna know until I jump!
Here’s proof I can put myself out there a little. The first few paragraphs and my current word count 🙂
Leave a Reply