Okay, the end of…

Okay, the end of scheduled writing time. Serious reorganization, 716 new words. That doesn't seem like so much, not when I'm aiming for something closer to 120,000 words. Eep. But I have to tell myself that even if I only write 1000 words a day, that means finishing a draft in 120 days. Which is four months, which means I'd be done with this first draft by Christmas. So I just need to write a little more some days. I think I should be aiming for 2000 new words on the days I write. I can do that, I think, though I may have to ramp up to it a bit.

What I'm more worried about is a question of pacing. I'm actually about 20K words in, and I'm only just establishing the love relationship. For this book to work, I have to convince people that these people are actually in love, ideally by the end of the first quarter of the book. So in 10K more words, I need these people to be clearly deeply, hopelessly in love. Oof. I'm just going to go bang my head against a wall for a bit now.

Actually, it's 1, so I'm going to stop for today and go run errands. But there will be more writing tomorrow.

1 thought on “Okay, the end of…”

  1. Just a thought – does the ‘beginning’ that you are writing now have to be so when the book is printed?

    i.e. could you later on move things around a bit and, as a result. have characters clearly, obviously, deeply madly in love early in the book as you want?

    I guess to it could be a question of what is the focus – i.e. is it the quest for love? (but if it is mutual on both parts then the rest of the book might be making it work?) or is it something else and the mutual love is just a setting up point for something else that the book is “about”?

    (or like many great things is it not really about something but “just” a great story? (or stories?).

    As a reader and a writer, but also as a person I would have to say that “love” is one of those things that is both very mysterious but also frequently seen best in the small details vs. the “grand gestures”. This past week’s New Yorker had a fiction piece that captured love in an interesting (but complicated) way – a line there was about how you could see the love in someone when they talked about small details of the person they loved – how her hair fell down across her back etc. A point I took as interesting and useful to keep in mind – but also in some important way quite true.

    While I could describe large gestures – a meal cooked, flowers bought, etc – thinking about my own relationship the elements that would illustrate our love are small smiles, knowing nods, kisses even after eating garlic pizza, planning for the future future (i.e. a return trip to someplace we have not yet gotten to but are planning on going).

    Great meeting up with you and Jennifer today – very productive as well!

    Shannon

    (I wrote about 3000 words or so but not fiction – non-fiction for clients/replies to various emails etc)

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