We had a great long weekend, with Brigid and Nick joining us Thursday afternoon through Sunday afternoon. Did some wedding planning (well, I did wedding cake and wedding reception dinner tasting, Brigid and Lisa did the wedding planning). Always great to have the kids here. I know Nick got some words in, and I got some words in. Poor Brigid, though, was pretty much busy all the time. Of course, she was already into her novel before November, so she was playing along for the fun of it.
Back to the grindstone, though…
Three-Day Update – The good news here is that I’ve probably written 8K-words over the past three days. The bad news is that only about 4K of them actually work. At least that’s bad news on the mathematical front. On the whole I’m pretty happy right now, though, because I actually have the answer to how I’m getting all three characters together, and most of it is now in the manuscript. Poor Maine Parker (the third character). Nothing worse than finding that someone special only to have her taken away in the most insidious fashion possible.
The solution to my problem itself is pretty okay. But I absolutely get fascinated by the process by which these things come. It just kind of arrived in this weird, holistic way as I was typing along earlier this morning. If I hadn’t pressed it, written the words that ran up to it, and then doubled back and tried it again, I don’t think it would have come.
As Lisa Silverthorne said in her comment on my post below, that’s the great thing about writing. you never know where or how things are going to hit you. Brigid and I (with bits of additions from Lisa and Nick) had a fairly long conversation about her project last night, and touched on this a few times. If I knew how ideas sprung up, I would bottle that patent and be a gazillionaire. Alas, though, I am just like the rest of us.
I’ve learned a lot about this third character the last three days, mostly by just writing along and the tossing out stuff I don’t like. It’s a pretty brute-force, don’t-try-this-at-home-kids method of progress, but it worked. And now I’m flying toward the end.
I think. [grin]
I’m definitely looking forward to the second draft of this one. Regardless, as of today I’ve officially crossed the 40K level needed to call the thing a novel! Woot! And I think I’ll be able to get the 50K limit by Friday. All good.