It happened yesterday. 19,902 words later my Work in Progress became my First Draft, and marked the official conclusion of my story Echoes. It was nearly 30 days of writing, some of it in tortured little gasps of 500 word blocks that, at times, seemed like it didn’t really want to come forward.
So it’s out and done. Well, sort of. I’ll need to edit the sucker and then . . . and then . . .
And that’s the part where I’m stumped. Because there really isn’t an “and then” for this story.
While I really needed to write this current story, it wasn’t actually meant to be published–at least not yet. It’s part of collection, to be honest: another in a set of stories about characters I developed over 20 years ago, and have been unable to get out of my head for a very long time.
When I sat down to write Echoes I had a reason in mind. One that was personal, one that I felt I need to do. And now it’s done, and I’m happy to have done it.
But there is a novel that needed to be finished and published before a lot of the things in this story make sense. At least that’s the way I see it. Some might not; some might think I could just publish this and be done, though it’s difficult to see where I could publish this without going the self-publishing route.
And without having to set up a lot of information about who they really are and what’s going on.
Which really isn’t true. I’ve read stores that were part of a collection, and I’ve come into them as points that weren’t exactly contiguous. I’ve not had much difficulty understanding what was going on in those stories, but then, I’m strange. I spend a bit of my writing energy thinking about time travel, so seeing things out of order, and then figuring out what happened, seems pretty simple to me.
Not always to others.
So, I have almost 20,000 words laying around waiting for something to happen. I have an 85,000 words novel I’m waiting for a person to help with editing.
I also don’t have anything to write. Really.
Since I started getting back into writing in late July, I’ve cranked out almost 140,000 words of new material. That’s the most I’ve written in a very long time, believe me. It may not seem like a lot to some people: I’ve seen some of the posts in the NaNo Groups on Facebook where people are saying they’ve written a half a million words in the year, and that leaves me wondering if I’m doing something wrong.
Then again, I’ve also seen posts where some of the same people are saying, “Help! I’ve written my 200,000 words and it’s a mess! I need an editor!”, and suddenly I don’t feel that bad. Sure, I’m slowing up when it comes to my writing, but I’m really watching what I write as a result, and I think, even now, my first drafts are getting far, far cleaner. Maybe that’s not the way people are suppose to write–I’ve been told that the way to create your first draft is just go with it and revise the hell out of things later–but maybe this is the way I’m suppose to write.
And I need to find something else to write. At the moment all I’ve got is an erotic fantasy rolling about in my head, and perhaps that’s what’s going to come out. We’ll see.
But I need to do another story. I need to do something. Maybe it’s a good time to finish my novel. That would surely make it easier to publish my newest story . . .
