Time for another writing update, folks.
In my long tradition of bipolar interactions with my stories, I have come once again to bemoan the state of my current manuscript. Ye gods, how could I have let things get this crazy? So many POVs. Chapters long enough to be novellas. A narrative that feels less like a journey and more like a meandering crawl.
The first draft is supposed to be dirty–I can hear my author friends telling me that now. Write fearless, they’ll say, and leave the editing brain to do its thing on the second draft. They’re right on this, but me? For some reason, this book pulls my worst–and most stubborn–writing habits to the surface.
This morning, since I’m taking medication for an injury, I decided to do some light revision, perhaps sketch out some editing notes, rather than put down fresh words. I’m a little too glassy-eyed to be sharp with my thoughts, so I need to keep things light for the day. Hence, here I sit, gaping at the sheer number of words I’ve used just to get things to the final confrontation.
This book is messy. The inevitable reaping of excess words in the second draft will be even messier.
You’ve got to stop writing those doorstoppers–another friend told me this last week. And he’s right about that, too. Huge books are a problem from both a creative and business standpoint.
Business-wise, writing a medieval style tome eats up valuable time in drafting and editing, drives up the printing costs, adds more “finished hours” for audio, and so much more. It’s a huge investment of time, and as the word count grows, so do those other factors. Higher word counts mean it costs more for editing, narrating, proofreading, and many other costs. For print, anything that drives your page count above 350 pages will cost more to produce, so it limits the royalty an author can charge.
Creatively, having “too much room” is a thing. I tend to be most creative when I set limits for myself. If I allow my muse to fill an unlimited amount of space with words, I get a lot more chaff with my wheat. There’s still a story in there, but it’s mixed with a lot of unnecessary stuff, too.
I’m not sure if that’s what has happened with The Heart of the Wasteland. There’s always a lot of chaff in the early drafts, but for this book, a lot of stuff had to happen before the end of the story. Characters had to get places. Others needed to die. Emotional beats needed paying off, and foreshadowing needed to happen. Whenever I dive into the manuscript looking for places to trim, as I did this morning, I find nothing I can easily snip away. I always need to add something elsewhere so the reader won’t miss this bit or that bit.
But then, maybe that’s just my bipolar side holding on too tight.
In other words–The Heart of the Wasteland is coming along, and I broke 254k last week. The next three days will be non-writing ones, seeing as how I’m laid up with an injury. Once I’m past my medicated days, though, I’ll be back on it with a vengeance. I always pick up this crazy momentum when I’m nearing the end of a book. It’s like my muse can smell the end of the book coming, and she gets hungry for the finish.
I have a holiday from work coming next week, and I plan on making a hard push for the end. I will, of course, keep you all updated. Until then, much love, and I’ll type at you soon.