May 1st. March might welcome in spring but the flowers wait till May. It’s a good time to get outside and hike, play some tennis, do absolutely anything except for sit inside writing…
Which is why I’m happy I’m just over half done. I’ll hopefully have finished a rough draft by September. I’ll be looking to edit it until the end of the year and then make 2010 the year of publishing. These schedules of mine never seem to survive contact with whim.
I’m still enthusiastic about the story overall, probably because I’ve changed the plot around a dozen times already. It’s become a lot faster than my outline and so I’ve had to expand a number of sections. A few characters have popped out of nowhere and now they need some developing too. This has lead to a lot of rough chapters not much better than a lengthy outline and continuity errors abound at this point, but I’ve been taking notes. The editing process is already piling up tasks.
The second half promises to be even harder. The tension is really starting to build on a few characters, but it won’t be a graceful road to the end. And then, of course, I have to end it. That’s the monkey that rides my back for the first 90,000 words. The outline was meant to tie everyone’s story down nicely, but then the outlined changed, so the ending has to too. I’m not sure I’m prepared for that just yet.
So, that’s the update. It’s coming along. The most interesting part has been the different direction my research has gone. Most people do their research and then write a story around it. I prefer to write the story, leave things loose enough that I can change things as necessary, add in the research that I think will add verisimilitude, and then tighten the plot around that. So far I’m looking at a small library of physics books that I’ll need to get through before the real editing can begin.
Another update soon!
