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There’s a scene near the beginning of Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring where Sam stops at the edge of the Shire and says, “If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest from home I’ve ever been.”
Today, I know how he feels.
I abandoned my last novel, The Broken Prince, at just under 60,000 words. Once I pass that point on Coven Hill, it will be the farthest from the beginning of a novel that I’ve ever been. I think that’s kind of cool. And another sign that I’m inching ever closer to those the end of the first draft.
As I mentioned yesterday, there’s a lot more writing to be done just to slog through the remaining unwritten parts of my first draft. And that’s just plot, mostly, with none of the subtlety of character and dialogue and glorious, luxurious description that make writing (or, well, re-writing in the case of this draft) so much fun. But today I’m officially giving myself a deadline.
July 31.
Our daughter (“Sprout,” until we decide on a name for her) is due the first week of August, and I’d very much like to have this first draft done and resting comfortably on my harddrive by the time she arrives. I think of it as a mission imperative to get this done by then, actually. Finding time to write with one kid is hard, sometimes downright impossible when you factor in family time, work time, and all-important sleeping time. But with an active toddler and a baby at the same time? What’s the next level up from impossible?
So, yeah, July 31. I can do this. Perhaps at the expense of early-morning Facebooking and blogging, but still—I can do it. And it starts…
RIGHT NOW!
Wasn’t it just a week ago that I said I could see the light at the end of the tunnel on the first draft of my novel? Well… not so fast.
I’ve been having trouble figuring out how to move some of my storylines forward, so I sat down and made a list of all the scenes and/or events that, bare minimum, need to occur to get me to the finish line.
The answer? Twenty-eight more things!
Some major scenes, some minor ones, but all of them vital to the various plots and subplots. Sigh. My work here is just beginning, it seems.
I just passed the 50,000-word mark of my first draft. In some ways it’s just a number, but in others it’s a big deal, because from a pure word-count standpoint it means I’m a little more than halfway done.
I think I now have a pretty good understanding of a) where I’m taking this, and b) how I’m going to get there. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a small pinpoint of light, but it’s there. I think I could probably sit down and write the final scene right now if I wanted to.
But, it’s all about the journey, and I’m still making little discoveries along the way. The only thing standing between me and a finished first draft is just finding time to write every day.
A year ago at this time I posted a list of 10 things I was looking forward to in 2008. Before I look ahead to 2009, I thought it would be fun to see how each of those things from 2008 turned out.
1. Ethan’s first birthday. This was as amazing and magical as I’d imagined. I’m looking forward to his second birthday with even more enthusiasm!
2. The New England Patriots Invitational Tournament. Also known as the NFL Playoffs, this one didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped or expected. But ah well, 18-1 is almost as good as 19-0. Right? Nah, not really. Alas.
3. Getting healthy. Sadly, this one’s still a work in progress.
4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In a word: Awesome.
5. Easter Island. I did indeed make it to Easter Island last March, and it was a great experience. Lingering health issues were kind of a drag on the trip, though, and I would much rather have traveled there with Penny and Ethan than go solo like I did.
6. Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The Spidey comics went from monthly to three times a month and featured an all-new, all-not-married status quo for Peter Parker. And, by and large, it was a great year for the character. I’m still jazzed about the series as we head into year two of the new era.
7. Creating… something. Last year was to be the one where I finally made some headway on either Rise of the Hidden Sun or my young adult novel. I chose the novel and managed to get about 45,000 words into it before losing steam around Thanksgiving. So, not a success but not an out-and-out failure, either. A work in progress.
8. New TV shows. I was really looking forward to Jericho (returning from the dead) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Jericho only lasted seven episodes but tied up most of the loose ends nicely, and Terminator started well, then got a bit spotty before coming on very strong here in season two. Here’s hoping for a season three pickup in 2009.
9. The Red Sox in Japan. Wow, I completely forgot this even happened. It was a neat little sideshow at the time but, ultimately, not all that big a deal. I’m more likely to remember the Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS than anything about their time in Japan.
10. Climbing a mountain. This finally happened in October during our vacation to Acadia National Park. It was a wimpy little mountain, but the views were spectacular and it felt grea to be back outdoors. Maybe 2009 will be the year where I finally get back into hiking the way I’d like to, though.
This might be the first time in my life I’ve written for 14 straight days. Currently I’m about 600 words ahead of schedule. I even had two straight 1,000-word days mixed in there. It’s not quite NaNoWriMo numbers, but I’ll take it. The challenge now is to keep it going.
The good news: I’m currently 900 words ahead of my desired writing pace for the month. The bad news: I’ve offically reached the end of the outline I’ve been working from for the past few months. Everything between now and the end of the novel is basically a 50,000-word black hole. I literally do not know what happens next. Exciting but scary.
LOST will return in January. Just 70 days to go! I wish I could get excited for it, but I just can’t muster the enthusiasm yet.
This has been a great week for Boston sports, and tomorrow it gets better with Thursday night football at Foxborro! Something to look forward to.
HBO has greenlighted (greenlit?) a pilot for a TV version of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy novels. If done right, this could reach Lord of the Rings levels of awesomeness.
It’s ironic that How I Met Your Mother is finally getting good ratings just as its quality seems to be taking a nosedive.
Driving home from work yesterday I discovered that two radio stations in the metro Boston area have already gone all-Christmas. I can’t take two months of “Little Saint Nick.”
Speaking of Christmas, Amazon now has a nifty feature that allows you to add stuff from any other website to your Amazon wish list. Penny came up with that idea like three years ago. If only we knew the right people, we coulda been rich!
I have fallen asleep on the couch watching each of the last four episodes of Fringe. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?
Fox is moving Terminator and Dollhouse to Friday nights this winter. Bye bye, Terminator and Dollhouse. We hardly knew ye.
As you can see, I’m 270 words ahead of the pace I’ve set for myself this month. I’ve written a little every day. Sometimes very little, in fact, but it all averages out. I seem to follow every good day with a bad one in terms of word count. I wonder why that is. Anyway, the day-by-day breakdown is below.*
* – Not that I expect this to be of interest to anyone but me.
What can I say? I kind of fell off the wagon this month. I’d like to blame it all on my vacation, but that was just one week and, well, what really happened is that I was in a lot of pain (same general area as my surgery last year) and that affected me a lot, too. (But I’m doing much better now thanks to some nifty muscle relaxants and a whole new approach to my physical therapy.)
Tomorrow is the start of NaNoWriMo, and while I won’t be participating this year, I’d still like to get my manuscript to the 50,000-word mark by the end of November. That means writing 16,000 words over the course of the next 30 days, or an average of 533 a day. Totally doable if I write a little every night.
Wish me luck.
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