Writing too fast?

I usually impose a 2000 word limit on writing. If I do 1000 or 3000, that's fine, it all evens out. I just try to make sure that I do that almost every day. To me, that isn't an extraordinarily high number, especially if I devote the entire day to it.

I came on this number after a lot of hit and miss. Basically, I decided that it was a productive number and also rested the creative brain for the next day.

But every once in a while a book explodes out of the gate and I just grab on and ride it to wherever it wants to go. There is no sense not letting inspiration take over when it comes along.

So with this new story, "Fateplay," I wrote nearly 30,000 words in four days. I'm not sure that's the fastest I've ever written, but it's up there.

Thing is, to me it reads just as well as my slower written material--if not better. The excitement, the forward momentum shines through.

Two things help. It's a first person story and it's told sequentially. What usually fouls me up in a story is getting the plot timing all sideways and backward. Writing from a first person perspective usually keeps this from happening. Writing from first person is just easier somehow, you're inhabiting the main character and just letting things flow.

Of course, it needs some editing, but no more than usual I believe.

In other words, I don't think writing this fast is a bad thing unless I'm forcing it. I'm trying to be careful about not forcing it. I want it all to feel fresh and in the moment.

I had to work the store yesterday, so didn't write a word. I'm not upset by it. I had reached a natural break point. But if this book gets entirely written in 10 days or something like that I'm not going to freak out about it.

Then again, I may get blocked and I'm not going to freak out about that either.

The story is what the story is.

Once again, there are some basic plot problems that arise from the original premise that don't become apparent until I'm well into the book. It's rare that I don't have these kinds of second thoughts. But I'm not messing with it. To me, it reads really well. It's only when I intellectually pick it apart that I see the problems.

Four big problems I see:

1.) the main character wins the lottery--big bucks, which he invests into Larping conventions.

Winning the lottery is kind of lame as a story device, and yet--it's really what made it fun to write. The "what if" daydreaming side of it really propelled the first part of the story.

2.) The basic McGuffin is that the good guys and bad guys are fighting over control of---control over a corporation. Over stock shares, essentially. Which is super lame. But there are bigger stakes.

3.) the plotting is a little awkward, a little live scene I added to the front, then the "telling" of his winning the lottery and what he does. Then he meets his mentor, and all the stakes are revealed, and then he has a chapter where he remembers meeting each of the five biggest shareholders, one after the other. Intellectually, almost none of this works. But I think it reads really well. Maybe I'm just kidding myself.

4.) the story involves cosplay and larping, and while as a comic shop owner for so many years I have a bit of awareness of this world, it really isn't MY world. I've set the action 15 years in the future so that I have some leeway with my imagination, but I'm going to need to delve into this world when I'm done writing to add to the verisimilitude.

These are doubts I'm shoving to the side and pressing forward.

Why? Because I'm having so much fun. That has to mean something.