Hello again. Here we are, having survived the dread week two of National Novel Writing Month and deep in the mushy middle of the book I’m writing.
As I type I’m 35,000+ words into the book, which is planned for 100,000 or so words. The first third is behind me and I’m still liking the book. I’ve done some terrible things to my main characters so far and one of them is still fairly unlikable. But that’s on purpose. Also, only two people have died. One off-stage and the other in front of my eyes. I won’t lie, it hurt. It was necessary to move the plot along and lays some groundwork for the end. Others may die along the way. We’ll see when we get there.
When I’m not working, I’m writing or holding a cat in my lap. Even when I’m at work I’m thinking about what I could be writing. This year counts as a major success for me so far not because I’m way ahead of the game and hitting a higher average daily word count than I aimed at, but because I’m balancing work, exercise (which is more important than ever), family life and the writing all at once. Somehow it’s coming together again.
That didn’t happen last year. The first time was in 2011 and that novel is maybe the best thing I’ve written. Until this year, anyway.
It’s going well, some parts are easy and others not so much. Familiar characters and settings are fun and putting them through their paces is even more fun. I like trying to figure out how they’re going to react. The best part of inventing the future through stories is finding the difficult bits and working through them to the easy ones.
Now I’ve got writing to do. Talk to you next week. Hope your novel’s going well, too. Tell me about it if you want.
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