…but in some ways, it also keeps getting better and better…
I wrote 1,600 words tonight and broke the 111,000 word barrier. This made me realize, though, that this novel might get up to 200,000 words.
Yikes! Talk about long winded! Hopefully, my future novels will not be anywhere near that length, without good reason.
However, the way this story is going, 200,000 words will be just about right. I do have an ending planned for it–or at least a general idea of how everything will be tied up in the end. And as I take a really broad look at the story, I can see that it has evolved and is evolving, and I’m really satisfied with the way it’s turning out.
The problem is, if I’m going to finish this beast by April 25th, it’s going to require a lot of work–at least 1,000 words a day. And I’ll do it–I’ll have to cut out computer games and other stuff from my life for a while–but I’ll do it.
The problem is that having a job now complicates things. I’m already up too late tonight, and it’s only 1:30 am. If I stay up much longer, I’m sure that I’ll sleep past my alarm, so I won’t say much more in this post.
I will say, however, that it’s really interesting how stories change as you’re writing them. Virtually every time I sit down to write in this novel, something happens as I’m writing that surprises me. At this point, as I’m moving things closer and closer towards the final climax and the end, a lot of thematic elements are popping up that I didn’t plan whatsoever. Concepts and ideas that I highly value without knowing that I valued them are popping up and manifesting themselves prominently in the story. I put my fingers to the keyboard and watch my characters do things that I didn’t think they would do. And, at the same time, I realize that I can’t constrain this story without killing it. It may be a bit longer than I expected, and all I can do is serve it, not force it.
I just hope that I can gain the skill with language to do this story justice when I go through and rewrite it. I know that the basic story is good, but I feel that I have many things I can do to improve as a writer.
And, now that it’s 1:36 pm and I know I’m going to be dead tired tomorrow, I’ll close this post. But before I go, I want to share with you something jaw droppingly awesome that I saw today. Our universe is so mind numbingly huge and inconceivably beautiful that I sometimes think that the height of arrogance is to think that our finite minds can understand and describe it all. When I look at stuff like this–pictures of stars and galaxies, worlds and planets, and other truly awesome stuff in space–it just makes me want to sit down and tell stories.
