The Power Of Doing Any Thing With Quickness...

"The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possesor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance."

- Mr. Darcy, in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This statement rather reflects what I feel about my writing today. I'm not all that happy about the quality. The scene I just finished is awkward and probably won't survive editing. But I did write 500 words again, and I wrote them much faster than yesterday. I wonder if this gem of a statement was Jane Austen inserting her own musings about a similar day of writing into the manuscript.

Though there is some time left before midnight I'm going to leave Lightning here. I've managed to get rid of the awkward scene, so I'll leave thinking up one that works for tomorrow. Instead I'll make a few notes regarding Flame Dancer. It's fresh enough still that I remember what I felt went wrong when I was actually writing. Though I've never made notes like this before I'm sure they'll prove useful when I return to it with red-ink in hand and start editing.

Still Trying To Get Back

Well it doesn't come back overnight, but it is getting a little easier to work on Lightning. Getting 500 words was easier today, though I want to move back up to 1000 again soon. Not much more on the writing front today.

I hope to be able to sit down tomorrow and make some immediate notes about Flame Dancer. I'm not going to read any of again until it's actually time to revise, but getting some notes of what I remember being wrong right now should help the revision process along nicely when it starts.

Finding Old Voices Again

It's clearly been too long since I worked on Lightning. I got 501 words today, which is sort of enough in building the pace, but it's a struggle. I have to reconnect with characters I haven't written in a long time. I'm getting back some feeling for their voices, but it's a very slow process indeed. That should be a lesson to me not to let things stall like this again.

The Day After

I felt good today about finishing up yesterday, though the feeling was marred slightly by a bad night's sleep. I decided to get back into the writing right away, but it took me a while to settle on something. I spent an hour at least looking through world-building notes on several projects before I made a decision to keep up actual writing.

The project I'm taking up, code-named Lightning, started as my 2004 NaNoWriMo I made the requisite 50,000 words that November, but the project lost steam soon after that. It's basically been at roughly 54,000 words for over a year.

I think Lightning will be done in less then 100k, but it will almost certainly top 80k at least. That's a month or so of work, provided I can get back into the 1000 a day rhythm. Today wasn't a spectacular success. Getting back into the mindset for the book is not an instant process; I only got 132 words today.

It Is Done

It's done. It's over. It's finished. After 127,183 words of story The End bumped the total to 127,185 a few minutes ago. I haven't quite adjusted to it yet. Flame Dancer is finished. In January still, which I'd thought I wouldn't make. In the end it just took a final sprint of 3186 words today and suddenly it was there. All the loose ends were tied up, the final scene I'd imagined had happened, there was nothing left.

If this post reads like it was typed by a confused man, that's because it was. It don't think I'll adjust until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

Cliffhanger

I didn't benefit from the burst of speed down the home stretch today. My daily wordcount is only slightly above average for a 1000 word day, 1083 to be exact. I could have done more, but I decided to leave with a cliffhanger. The theory is that I will get back into the writing easier thanks to the cliffhanger. It works for reading, so why not for writing?

The total wordcount I reached actually reflects my cliffhung status. 123,999 on the edge of getting another full 1000 but not there just yet. It's a pure coincidence of course, but it's still a nice fact. For the first time in a while I'm thinking that this thing might come in under 130k total. Though that depends on just how fast I can neatly tie up all the loose ends I've left myself. A few major ones should be done soon, but not everything gets resolved all at once. I just hope I don't forget any of them. Sure I could tidy things up while editing (it's certainly not going to be send anywhere without at least one edit) but I'd like to get it right in one go.

The End Is Nigh!

Though I ended up leaving things at a shade over 1100 for the day yesterday it's taken off again today. I'm now over 1400 words with an hour to spare before midnight. This isn't just the interaction between characters helping things along, this is the build-up of speed as I approach the end of the novel. I doubt it'll happen in January, but unlike two or three days ago I don't think that would be impossible either.

Even though I knew what still had to happen in the story I didn't really realise how close I was to the finish line until I finished writing just now. I still have to figure out a way for my characters to get their hands on someone who is currently comfortably in the middle of a 30,000 strong army, but after that it's just a matter of a handful of loose ends to be tied up. Somehow it always surprises me when I reach this point.

Tomorrow we dive head first into the home stretch (to use a rather awkward mixed metaphor).