Yesterday afternoon I finished the first draft of Unmentionable Things. Go me! It came in at 50,599 words, not a bad length for a Young Adult novel. I cleverly decided to knock a few years off my protagonists' ages, thereby changing the market so that the shortness of the story wouldn't be a problem. But it took over two months to get those words. Okay, I had some time in there when I was sick and not writing. But still, the 700 words/day output? Very lame.
I felt like I really didn't hit my stride with this story until the last third or so. Now I'm going through withdrawal because I managed to end on the upswing of the writer's pendulum (the "Hey, this is pretty good!" as opposed to the "Wow, this really sucks!"). Even so I'm not sure how well it will hold up when I go back to edit and revise. Will I have to rewrite the whole first half again? Probably.
But I don't need to think about that now. It's time to pick up The Egyptian Building again, which I haven't looked at since I finished the first draft in early January. I know the first ten thousand words will need rewriting. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the other eighty thousand words.
221 words | March 24, 2006 10:28 AM | Writer's block