Stuttering and stammering toward the finish line

I’m currently just over 112,000 words, which is good and bad.  It’s good in the sense that I’m over 112,000 words and I’m getting close to the finish.  It’s bad in the sense that I was just over 110,000 words on December 30, 2008 — it’s taken me a week to get out 2,000 words.

The pace is definitely slower than I would like — I’m hoping to be done with the first draft by this time next week, and I expect it to take another 8,000 words (or possibly a little more).  That being said, what I have written is shaping up nicely — the secrets are coming out and the final (political) conflict is shaping up nicely.  I think it’ll be an exciting ending, and I expect it to be worth the time and effort.

How’s everyone else doing?

96,162

It’s been a hectic week since I last posted.  There were a couple of issues that came up at work last week, continuing education classes that had to be taken, christmas shopping that had to be done, an obligatory family visit, football, basketball and, oh yeah, writing.

In the last week, I’ve written a little over 6,000 words (as you can see by the amazingly clever titles for this post and the one before).  I’m settling in for the home stretch — the first major secret which drives the ending has been revealed.  The second is just gnawing to come out, but it’s not quite time.

I think I might blow past the 110,000 word mark in finishing this first draft.  At the rate it’s taking me to get through some of the parts that have to be wrapped up, I’ll probably finish closer to the 115,000 word mark.  That’s not a problem — I’ll still be done by the end of the year.

I have 20 “events” that have to happen between now and the end of the novel.  I think my pacing will now be tied more to the events instead of a word count — if I get through 1.3 events per day, I’ll finish in time.  Many of the events blend together — there will be chapters where three or four of the events get completed in under 2,000 words.  That means that the pacing won’t be too onerous — I just have to stick with it.

I’m very excited about how the ending is coming — I don’t feel that it’s going to be dragged out, but I also don’t think it’s going to be over too quickly.  I’m aiming for “just right” on the pacing front.  I’ll know soon enough.

Planning

I am a firm believer in planning.  I’m also a firm believer in throwing plans out the window.  In other words, I believe there need to be lines, but you need to be willing to color outside of them when appropriate.

This weekend, I had to spend time planning out the rest of the novel.  Now this isn’t going to be a huge planning post — I’ll do that when I plan out the next novel.  However, I am going to talk about the evolution of the plan.

When I started the novel I had a roughly 25 point plan of important points for the novel.  As I’ve progressed, I finesse the plan.  Amazingly enough, even after covering 10 or so points from the original plan, I end up with roughly 25 points in the new one.  At the point I’m down to the last 25,000 words or so.  I now have a 27 point plan for the remainder of the novel.

One of the reasons I’ve decided I had to take a couple of days to plan out the remainder of the novel is because one of the things that I hate most in a book is when they resolve everything in the last ten pages.  I much prefer an ending that goes with the flow of the story, instead of one crammed into the final couple of chapters.  In my story, there are several storylines, which flow from the “discovery” of key pieces of information.  There are two major revelations, as well as a couple of minor ones (as a side note, for those of you who didn’t get my direct statement or metaphor at the beginning of the post, here’s an example of having a plan and throwing it out: at the beginning of the writing process, there were two major revelations.  In the last 30,000 words of so, one of the two has become a minor revelation, replaced by a new major revelation; if your plans are inflexible then you can miss out on an even better storyline).

So, with the first major revelation about to come out, I felt I really needed to write out a guideline as to where I was going, so I ended up with good spacing among the revelations.  With that done, I feel like I’m ready to tackle the end game and get this draft finished!