Blog Post No. 410
The first draft of the new novella is done. I finished on Friday with a big push and took the weekend off. It’s way too big and not just because it’s longer than I wanted it to be, there is a lot of fat to trim. For the first time in close to 70 days, I’m not writing. To be clear, I only spent 56 days on Break/Interrupt (the other days were finishing the Invasion Novel) but that’s 25 days longer than I had hoped and longer than the marathon writing I did last year for Broadcast Wasteland.
The time wasn’t a waste, though. Like I said, I wrote way too much (again) and the final count is 66 000 words, a whopping 36 000 more than I’d planned, and 22 000 more than the last two novellas. I guess you could say I missed the mark. I still hope to cut it down significantly, though this will be the most I plan to cut from one story. It certainly can use it and hopefully I can find the right balance between length and story content. I don’t want to cut for the sake of it, but anything over 60 000 can usually be considered a novel. It would be a short novel, but in the inconsistent brackets of measurement for books, it’s fair to say.
By the time I had reached 50 000, I thought that I could get it down to 44 000 like the previous two books. Now that I’m well beyond that, I’m hoping that I can get it under 50 000. Not that I want to make any bold claims. I have no idea how I’m going to do this. (Not that I ever know how I do it). The next step is to give it a read, trimming where it’s obvious, making plans to chop more, and filling in some of the gaps that come out of not planning my story before I sit down to write it.
I thought that I would hit Monday running and start my edits, but I had some layout stuff that needed much more progress than I had made at the time and the kitten is still too small and (when it’s not sleeping) too much of a trouble maker to be left alone, and my brother was busy in the evening. Tuesday was the same, finishing the layout (before the author goes through it and finds my mistakes and things I missed) and writing this post. That left Wednesday as the start of the edits and the last day of the month.
It’s the same situation I was in last year, except I started the novella on September first and went into mid October. So, I guess I’m still a little ahead. Just not as much as I’d planned. Not having the day job should make it a little easier, though, the Invasion Novel is still looming over my head and I don’t want to put it off too long. It’s a scary monster that will eat me and needs to be tamed before I can start on the next novel. Ugh, editing is the worst part of writing. At least, it’s the worst part I’ve run into so far. Anyway. Here’s to making progress.
Ben Van Dongen 