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swan_towerTonight, I passed fifty thousand words.
The problem is, once I pass 40K, I enter the dreaded Middle Of The Book. It's a wasteland in which the initial momentum of starting a novel has worn off, the end is not yet in sight, there are a variety of things to be juggled that range from inoffensive little balls to flaming chainsaws, and there won't be any more meaningful landmarks of progress until I hit 80K, which is the lower limit for what one might reasonably expect to publish as a fantasy novel.
So it turns out that an unexpected benefit of dividing this book into five acts is, I get other landmarks. Somewhere between about 60-65K, I will finish Act Three, and that is a closer thing to look forward to than 80K is. And it mitigates my usual difficulty at estimating total word-count; when I finish Act Three, I'll be three-fifths of the way through the story, though not necessarily the work.
Anyway, I wasn't going to hit 50K until a couple of nights from now, but this afternoon I wrote the other flashback Act Two needed, and stuck that in where it belongs.
<examines the flashback>
Apparently this novel is about people figuring out what it is they really want, and then deciding what price they're willing to pay for it.
Most of them are paying too much.
Authorial sadism: Deven's turn to be wrong wrong wrongitty wrong. (Except for the bit where he's right. And that's even meaner.)
LBR quota: Both blood and rhetoric, with love gasping for air as it tries not to get crushed to death.
The problem is, once I pass 40K, I enter the dreaded Middle Of The Book. It's a wasteland in which the initial momentum of starting a novel has worn off, the end is not yet in sight, there are a variety of things to be juggled that range from inoffensive little balls to flaming chainsaws, and there won't be any more meaningful landmarks of progress until I hit 80K, which is the lower limit for what one might reasonably expect to publish as a fantasy novel.
So it turns out that an unexpected benefit of dividing this book into five acts is, I get other landmarks. Somewhere between about 60-65K, I will finish Act Three, and that is a closer thing to look forward to than 80K is. And it mitigates my usual difficulty at estimating total word-count; when I finish Act Three, I'll be three-fifths of the way through the story, though not necessarily the work.
Anyway, I wasn't going to hit 50K until a couple of nights from now, but this afternoon I wrote the other flashback Act Two needed, and stuck that in where it belongs.
<examines the flashback>
Apparently this novel is about people figuring out what it is they really want, and then deciding what price they're willing to pay for it.
Most of them are paying too much.
Authorial sadism: Deven's turn to be wrong wrong wrongitty wrong. (Except for the bit where he's right. And that's even meaner.)
LBR quota: Both blood and rhetoric, with love gasping for air as it tries not to get crushed to death.
