Done, and well, not so done...

Spent the day writing again, so what else do I have to talk about?

I write best when I'm alone, when I can wander around in a daze, talk to myself occasionally, take a mini nap once in a while, and otherwise completely immerse myself.

Linda and my work days off overlap, mostly, so this isn't quite possible. But it's doable --certainly I can't afford to rent motel rooms every time I get the urge to write. I'm always conscious of her presence, but I can try to close the doors and mutter quietly.

When I came back from Florence, I thought I was "Done, and done" and that I had a 35,000 word manuscript.

I know from past experience that I usually need to go back and fill in, flesh it out, so it seemed like I was very close; "Done, and done" is the way I put it on this blog.

But, well, once it was transferred into a writing program, it turned out to be only 25,000 words. Even for a young adult, that's a little light. So, not so "Done, and done."

After a week rewriting, it was pushed up to 28,000 words. (I'm being very generous with my words -- with the intent of tightening it up later -- really, this isn't a bad thing for me, because I tend to get the plot down first, and everything else later. I call this fleshing out the "sloppy" phase of writing, and it always seems to make the manuscript more readable, somehow.)

Then I realized that the start of the book was just too slow, and I need a slam-bang beginning, to introduce major characters and foreshadow.

So I did that. Now I'm closer to 32,000 words, and thinking I'm more or less, "Done, and done." (You know, after a couple of revisions...)

Yesterday, I starting adding a few scenes with a major new character. And that worked out very well. All the elements fit, are connected, intertwined. Amazing how that happens. I can't tell if my subconscious has already worked all this out, or the coincidences just happen to fit.

Now I'm at 34,000 words.

Then, I get the bright idea of changing the order of chapters.

So I spend hours cut and pasting, back and forth, cutting here, adding here, and so on. It's like giant game of Concentration, and it is only possible because I am so deep into the story that I am able to keep track.

At the end of the process, it was almost exactly the same number of words (like I said, mostly a moving around of the order of chapters.) There were some good things about the rewrite, and some bad things. Overall, I think I like the first version better -- but I'm glad I did it, because I probably always would have wondered.

It also shows, somehow, the internal consistency of the story, that I was even able to make a radical reorganization and still have the story work.

After the two new chapters, yesterday, I'm at 36,000 words, with at least a couple of new chapters left to do.

Then I'm "Done, and done."

Heh.

I think it's necessary, somehow, for me to convince myself that I'm more or less writing the final version of the story. And that I seem to have an endless capacity to fool myself. (Even if, in the back of my mind, I know better.)

I think these new elements haven't complicated the original storyline too much, but have added a good number of "fantasy" elements, as well as some interesting "action" scenes, both of which were necessary.

All these additions have been improvements, in that they make the story more exciting, hopefully. My original story was more elegiac, if you will, which I liked and which I had a lot of feeling for, but which I realized might not be so charming for the average reader. That story is still there, but it's been dressed up a bit.

I think what I've been missing in writing over the last few years, is the concentration on "story" above all. It was what originally unlocked writing for me, 35 years or so ago. Just write a good story, I told myself.

Of course, I'm trying to write as well as I can, but I don't get too bogged down on word choice. It's all about getting a story down that moves, and characters the reader will hopefully care about.

Whether I succeed or not, that's a whole nother blog.