Last night, I rolled over 30K words in Wish Hits the Fan, which should be about halfway through a typical first draft for me. Except I feel like I'm coming up on the culmination of everything. Oh, there's still tons left to write ahead of me, but I'm not feeling like there's 30K words worth.
Oh, I'll add some more words back in through the first 30K. Like always, there are huge chunks of nothing but dialogue. And huge chunks where I was rushing to get the scene on paper. When the fingers are flying, there isn't always time to engage the wordsmith part of the brain. I mean, I cranked out 2700 words in two hours last night. Loads of stuff but I suspect very little depth of feeling in there. And I think I need to go back and weave in backstory from the other 4 books. Plus, I think I need to write that scene instead of giving it a short sentence. And...
Well, Wish Hits the Fan is a sequel, but it's also the culmination of the story arc. I'm committed to making this the final book in this arc. (There may be subsequent djinn books, but the story that began in Wish in One Hand will wrap up here.) And I have a lot to wrap up.
It is coming together. I'm really pleased with the way all the loose ends are weaving the tapestry into a cohesive picture here.
Not sure what the word total will be on this one. Wish in One Hand was a behemoth in comparison to say In Deep Wish. This? We'll see. All I know right now is that the writing is coming along fast and I'm feeling good about it. I know the end. It's written on a sticky-note beside my ashtray with other stuff on top of it so I won't be focused on writing to the finish line.
Eleven days left until the end of the month. Fourteen days until my editor has had Natural Causes for a month. This close. Can I write all the words I need to write to get to THE END in 2 weeks? Stay tuned.
I learned--at least with my "spec" books (meaning the ones I write that aren't constrained by a publisher's guides)--that a story knows how many words it needs to get told. Even if I set a word goal, I know when the story has been told, whether that's 20K words fewer or 50K more. And I'm excited to see where this arc goes. It sounds like the whole story is read to be finished in this book and that's a good thing, when you are an author. I knew that feeling when I wrote MOON SHOT, even though those original Wolves still pop up from time to time. But that story arc got its end, and its HEA. Go forth and write my words, Grasshopper! ;)
ReplyDeleteWoohoo! You're really rolling!
ReplyDeleteBy the time you fill in all the stuff you listed, I'm sure WHTF will be as long as you want it to be. Maybe longer. ;-)
You go, girl! I'm still waiting for my fingers to fly. Of course, it might help if I was actually working on my WIP instead of reading blogs! :)
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