Category: book update

Where do I stand on what I am calling Novel #1 for now?

First of all, yes, it started out with a different WIP name, but I eventually grew to dislike it as I wrote.

What is the current word count? Remember, I wrote well over 65,000 words in July during the reamstories.com 2000 words a day for 30 days/60, 000 words in a month challenge.

Currently, I have cut about 20,000 words. However, I am planning to add back about 20,000-30,000 words by the end of this draft.

What is the best thing I learned about writing a novel? I learned two things.

First of all, you do not have to write your novel in chronological order. You can arrange the scenes, the chapters, the entire book from page one to a thousand (or whatever) after you finish that first draft.

That means if you want to write the ending first, do it. Then write the middle. Then write the beginning. Then fill in the blanks. If that is what you want to do, do it.

Did I do this? I did not start with the end. Not on paper. I started in the middle of my story and then sort of worked back and forth until I felt everything had come together.

Secondly, I learned that while writing that first draft of your novel, even though you plotted the whole thing out completely, even though you outlined religiously, even though you followed through with your plan, you may write thousands upon thousands of words that you never end up publishing in that novel.

I learned that you may end up writing a lot of the background information on your characters, on their lives, on so many other weird not-directly-related-to anything to do with the actual novel you are writing—and that is ok.

You may need to write out a great deal of information while you write that first draft in order to ground yourself more thoroughly in the story.

Did I plot this novel out in amazing and glorious detail? Not once, not twice, but three different times.

Did I outline this novel religiously and in obscene detail? Oh yes, I did, twice.

Did my characters stick to the damn script while I wrote this novel. No, they did not. They introduced new characters I had not even considered or thought of. They dragged the novel off the plot and into a whole other world of issues. And they demanded I fix the things I had written and would continue to write to coincide with their version of things.

Did I do what they said? Yes and no. I gave them the lead they wanted, but I also reined them in and told them some pieces could be used in the second or third (fiction) novel we are planning to write in the coming two years.

What’s this novel about? Two brothers and their significant others. Or one brother gets a divorce, while the other brother is such a mama’s boy (among other issues) that he loses a fiancée.

If you have other questions, please let me know. I will do my best to answer them without giving everything in the novel away.

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