Tag Archives: Word count

Writing, Inspiration, Career

Ending a Novel

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

I finished up chapter 20 today, which wrapped up the climax shown in the prologue. That meant it was time for a big decision: do I end the book here? My first inclination was that yes, I should end it here. After all, the climax itself was resolved in a very thorough manner. It would be a bit of a cliffhanger, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I am certainly eager to be done with this story as well. Impatient really as I can’t wait to get to the whole editing and publishing part. So when I finished chapter 20, I was ready to throw in the towel. Write a little epilogue so I didn’t leave readers hanging completely and call it done. It was the reaction from my girlfriend, who has been reading this story as I wrote it chapter by chapter, that changed my mind and got me to thinking. I was super excited to be done. She was very much not excited. I’ve asked her not to give me any feedback until I do my first edit since I have a list of things I’m going to add/change anyway. She’s done a great job sticking to my request too. It was her tone that gave it away though. She was very disappointed.

So I’ve been thinking about it all day now and even tried to put myself in the readers’ shoes. The story is really for them after all. Then I realized ending the story right here might just piss people off. I spent a lot of time and effort tiptoeing around a lot of secrets and subtext because my main character is completely in the dark about all of this and all of the others are actively keeping things that way. The climax is the breaking point, not just of the action, but of the information. I realized that if I didn’t keep going, I wasn’t going to give the readers the payoff they deserve for being in the dark along with the main character. This is why I’m two pages into chapter 21 and actually pretty glad I’m still going. I still plan to finish the book this weekend, it just means I’ll be doing more writing than I thought.

All of the writers that I’ve researched have said pretty much the same thing about writing a novel, or anything really: make it as long as it needs to be and no more. I have been keeping a close watch on my page and word counts because it gives me a feeling of accomplishment to look back every week or two and see just how far I’ve come. This being my first novel, the process has felt pretty long and drawn out. This has been discouraging at times so I always write down my page and word total when I finish a chapter. In the beginning, I was also worried that this story would be far too short. I grew up reader authors like Robert Jordan, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others. When I was that age I also thought that writing stories that long was what it took to be an author. Thankfully I am content these days to compare myself only to myself. For the most part. I’m doing this for me, because it’s fun and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. So I am happy with how long my book has turned out to be, and amused that I was worried it would be too short. Character development takes awhile after all, or at least it does for me. Either way, I’m still crazy excited to be almost done!

Career, Writing, Inspiration

Week 2 – Getting Very Excited

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

I’m now in to my second week of my serious writing project and I find that I’m really enjoying it. I frequently don’t feel the awesome inspiration that started this project several years ago, but I’m learning in a way that seems to be sticking that I don’t need to have that feeling to write. It is fascinating to me just how much of what I feel about writing seems to depend on just how I look at the task. When I think of a finished book and just the sheer number of pages, characters, scenes, and plot that make up that book it is incredibly intimidating. Always has been. That intimidation leads to fear of failure. Well, it does for me anyway. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t like failing at anything. I know it is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean I like it. So that fear and intimidation give my inner critic a hard to ignore voice. “Oh, I’m tired today. Anything I write won’t be good.” or “I don’t know how to really get in to that inspired mood so that I can just practically will my book in to existence.” Very sill stuff when you take a step back and look at the objections of your inner critic more rationally. Still, not all of his observations are silly. “Am I really good enough to do this? I have to eat after all.” That one has stopped me more than once.

One of the things that is really helping me kick that inner critic to the curb is the daily writing routine Stephen King recommends in his On Writing book. I’ve already proven to myself that 1,000 words a day is a very doable, even easy, target for me to hit. There have been a few days where I checked my word count several times before I actually hit my daily minimum. Then there was last Sunday when I managed to put down 2,300 or so words and nearly finished an entire chapter in one sitting. I think this, as much as anything else, is helping me to overcome my inner critic and build up my confidence. I am proving to myself every day, in a way that can’t be dismissed, that I can do this. That in fact, I am doing it! Every time I think and/or re-realize that, I can’t help but get excited about what I’m doing. I also feel like I’m really taking control of a life that I’ve let drift for years. I have no illusions that I have much control over my life, but at least this is something I’m doing for myself. Proving this to myself. It’s a good feeling.

Oh, I also stumbled across a pretty amazing resource for any aspiring writers out there. I’ve only scratched the surface of the great information here, but it’s getting me even more excited about my writing and my prospects for some day making a living off of my writing:

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=9358

Tons of good information there. It’s made me realized that I need to treat writing much like I do my interest in computers. I need to read up on it a bit every day to stay up to date with where the industry is, what successful writers are doing, what new tech or trends are changing things up, etc. I should know at least as much about writing as I do about the HD 7970 3GB graphics card powering the visuals on my computer. I’ve got a lot to learn, and I’m excited to get to it.