Running Free!
Update 19 12-18 October 2020
We are running! Seriously, things are moving on the manuscript. In the previous week I had a bunch of troubles, just a lot of things that didn’t allow me to write, but we hammered out a lot of words. Last week was 8357, but this week… coming in even hotter.
I have resigned myself to the fact that the novel is going to be even longer than I intended. But you know what, that’s ok. It is what it is. Will it be harder to sell down the road? Sure. But there is always the chance that I could cut the book into two parts. Though if I did that, I think I would go back and add in some of the material I skipped to shorten the book in the first place. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I have a lot of road to cover before I even start to shop the book around.
Word Count
So, I got in an amazing 5 sessions during the week. Now each of these sessions was shorter than my normal 2-4k marathon runs, but the final total is still the best I’ve done since I started this 16-weeks to finish sprint.
Week 9 of 16 comes to a close with a total of 9913 words over 5 sessions of writing (and yes, I could have upped all of those numbers but I’m still happy with the outcome). The WIP is now sitting at 129,911. I have pushed my goal out to 160,000 but I’m about to push that out to 180,000 words.
I’m holding off on pushing out the goal because I hate the idea of my goal bar changing back to yellow. Sad.
Chapters
I managed to get three chapters mostly done this week.
In Rune’s storyline he has arrived at “Oasis of Death” and we had a fight with a monstrous scorpion and plans to infiltrate a castle. We also had the surprise appearance of a figure that seems like it’s Nemo… but he says he’s traveling at the wrong time, and he’s battered and heavily injured. Strange.
The next chapter then brings us to Nemo’s POV, but its directly after the horrible mishap with the gate spell he tried. Nemo finds himself on an island floating in the Astral Sea. He is confronted by a crazed elf, who has been exiled to live on the floating rock for eternity. Said elf is also from a forgotten diaspora… a line of elves thought dead and gone.
Slater’s chapter brings us back to the ashen and their society and religion, as these mud-covered dwarfs lead the Duo and their companions through the underground and toward their goal.
Details and Craft elements:
While it is late in the book, I am constantly introducing clues as to the history of the world, and the fact that every culture has recorded myths, legends, and history completely differently.
Nemo’s chapter is actually a huge teaser for the series that follows this book. It introduces the shadow elves and their version of history (sort of, the speaker is insane). It also introduces the fleet of dreadnoughts that are waiting in Astral Space for a beacon to summon them back to the mortal world.
The appearance of Nemo in Rune’s chapter is a bit of the hard part to come. Nemo is jumping to different points in the Ashlands, but he’s also jumping to different times at these locations. And technically there are two versions of Nemo at some of these points. It gets a little confusing and weird to keep it all in order, especially as I’m writing his appearance in linear time for the OTHER people, but I’m not writing all of Nemo’s story in order.
Week 10 of 16:
So, THIS week in school I have to turn in the next 15,000 words of my novel for part 2 of my final. (Not a problem) and also, I have to turn in a new version of my query letter. Last week I created a 4.0 version of my query. I liked it mostly, but still thought that version 3.0 was more detailed and more… interesting? I have spent this morning creating a 3.5 version of the query combining the best parts of both queries and I think I have it down.
My normal goal is 6500 words for the week, which will finish off chap 28 and then 30. (Chap 29 was finished off in week 8). I’m a little worried about chap 30.
Chap 30 Nemo saves Caitlyn
I ended chap 29 with Caitlyn and her crew escaping from great evil, having lost a member of their team. I intended to have another chapter of Caitlyn and the students grieving for their loss, and traveling across the desert for another week or so, before they hit another point of extreme danger and THEN we’d have the Nemo chapter where he arrives and lends a helping hand.
The thing is… rotating the chapters around it seems natural for Nemo to come in here… and have him save the group. Otherwise I’m adding a LOT more words to the final count and I still need to fiddle with the timelines so that everyone arrives at Act three on the same date. I have to figure out how I can start the chapter with Nemo coming to the rescue, getting Caitlyn and the survivors out of the trouble, and then convey the two weeks of time jump for Caitlyn from chap 29 to 30. BUT I also have to do it completely from Nemo’s POV.
I could try to swap around the chapters a little and put a different pov in between. IDK… I will have to think about it for the rest of the week.
OUTRO
Anyway… keep writing everyone. Get those word counts in and keep reaching for the goal. Also I might actually try to finish the book as part of nanowrimo, even though I should have a lot less than 50k to do by the time Nov 1st rolls around.
