Swoop
So yes, things here in pixel land have been quiet. Quiescent, even. Dullsville.
On the plus side: I just cracked 19,000 words on the novel, which works out to a chapter a week, every week, for the past two months. I'm adopting a lean and mean approach to it: character and dialogue. That's it. Oh, and there's plot. But most of that comes out using only those two elements. Once the story is in, I'll go back and put the eyebrows on it. Need to get myself a big old street map of NYC, for example, to build the sense of place up with a few of them there choice details.
But for now: I am cranking along, and every week I think, "Will this be the week where it all crashes down and grinds to a halt?" It hasn't happened yet, although there have been some close calls. There was Chapter Five, for example. I wrote that one three times in a week, producing close to six thousand words before I got the 2,000 words that were mostly the right ones.
It's a bit like a high wire act, and I do enjoy it. Every time I reach a place and stall, it turns out that what I thought I needed to write wasn't actually what I needed to write, and what ends up happening storywise, though unexpected, is better than what I had planned out.
Which means that the end of the book will probably not be the end that I currently have in my brain, but that's fine. I just hope that all the zigs I make match up with the zags and end up creating a story that's engaging and worth a reader's time.
I suppose I'll find out, when it's all...finished.
Finished!
What a concept.
