I have to laugh at myself. Every day I finish up thinking that “well, tomorrow I’m set to make some real ground!” And to be fair, I am making good ground. Still, I’m finding that perhaps the idea of scheduling twelve projects to happen kind of all at once is maybe not the best thing for raw velocity. Today I spent a good chunk of time working on the production side of two projects that took up most of the morning, so that means I didn’t sit down to STARDUST until around lunchtime.
The raw numbers look tepid for raw advancement. I’m counting about 800 new words.
But I keep reminding myself I’m actually in the process of my second pass on this part of the book. My Ron-Standard bookkeeping standards credit me for 5,000 “recycled” words. Not bad for a half-day’s work.
From a story standpoint, I made it through at least three fairly major steps.
This is an interesting time period, and I admit I’m enjoying the work at this point. Since I know what’s happening, so much of this pass is about adding depth and focusing on pacing. For my own level of neurosis and enjoyment, while writing a novel I’ll take the act of fiddling with pacing over pretty much anything. There’s so much that goes into it, really. Working through stopping points and final sentences—trying to determine what each segment of the story is trying to say. It’s really a lot like writing short stories in a way. Each segment becomes this self-contained thing with a beginning and a middle and an end. Sure, you can get away without driving to closure. I mean, that’s kind of the point, I suppose.
But it’s an interesting process.
I’ll have to think about it some more.
Total Dare Word Count Now: 37,250
Total Book: 39,500 words