Me, to Mom: Want to do some hired sitting this week? Mom: What book are you about to write now? Me: Just polishing up the last Walker Papers. NEXT week I get to write the Spirit of the Century novel for Fred Hicks/. Mom: In a *week*? Me: It’s only 60K. It is possible there is something wrong with me. (And also, no, I am not going to be writing a 60K novel in a week, although it’s *theoretically* possible. That theoretical world, however, is not this one. :))
Ted sent me out of the house today to write, which was an unexpected gift. So I went away, surprised myself by writing 5K in 3 hours, and finished SHAMAN RISES. The last words of Joanne’s adventures have now been written. Wow. I mean, there’s revision work to do, both of my own and editor-requested when those come along, but yeah. I’ve wrapped it up, and I’m surprisingly satisfied with the ending. I shall celebrate by watching at least one and perhaps TWO episodes of Downton Abbey. :)
Author Kait Nolan wrote a blog about Kickstarters and platforms (featuring me!), which caused me to go have a look at the most successful fiction Kickstarters. NO DOMINION’s still in the top 15, which surprised and delighted me. DINOPOCALYPSE NOW, which I’ll be writing a book for next month, is still in the top 5. (And Tim Pratt’s latest Marla Mason novel is also in the top 20! Yay!) The whole thing made me kinda want to run another Kickstarter. Kinda. :) I’m not going to (despite somebody asking for…
Me, worried: I’m at the climactic battle & I’m only 75k into the book. Ted, phlegmatic: You’re at the end, Catie. It always takes you until the third draft to get the end right. Me: But I don’t know if I’ve got 20k of wrap-up! Me, hours later: Oh, shit, I see what he was saying. It DOES always take me multiple drafts to get the end right & this whole book is The End. Riiiiiiight. Okay. No wonder this is so messed up. I have, in fact, completed the…
In the last several books I’ve written, I’ve noticed a tendency that as I approach the end, I leap ahead, write the end, then come back and fill bits in. I have been doing that for this whole bloody book. Now, I know people who work this way as a matter of course, but I don’t, and I don’t like it, and seriously, what’s that all about anyway? This evening I realized that it’s because I’m writing the end. I mean, yes, the end happens to be 100,000 words long,…