Complaining about Writing
I have been remarkably good.
I've been writing for at least half an hour every day and my computer has stopped crashing :: crosses fingers ::. Of course, now that I've said that, it's going to lock up as soon as I save in Pages. I should go do that now.
Nope, all good. iTunes is even running and Tweetie's up in the background and everything.
Right. But as much as I've been writing, I have yet to get past this part of the story. THe problem is still the exposition. I need to communicate this information somehow, none of the characters really want to talk about it, and all I've written is chapter after chapter of complaining.
The more I think about this, the more I really want to try to get this published. However, I end up tripping over myself in writing the first draft. I've spent so much time writing and rewriting scenes and then trying to figure out which combinations work the best together that I have years of work put into this thing, hardly any of which is represented in the actual, coherent novel. I cannot hand someone my current 30,000 words and say "look how clever I am; everything's internally consistent" because it's not there. It's all in my notes and hinted to in the world, but the world ends up being remarkably generic and the characters unpleasant. I think that's my cue to restructure again and think about the parts that are entertaining.
See, this current version is the best version I've ever produced (and there have been many, MANY versions of this story), but it still suffers from 1st novel syndrome. Mainly, the novel is structured so that it starts with info-dumping and continues doing nothing until the very end. Nothing happens. Previous versions had more interesting events, even if all of them were obviously lifted from somewhere. I wasn't very subtle when I was 13.
Basically I'm going to have to chop off my first chapter at some point and distribute all of the information there into the story. This is problematic because it gets rid of some characters I need later. But I will triumph. I hope.
The other thing I'm contemplating is word count. I had originally planned for one book and would still very much like to do it in one volume. The story itself is divided up into three parts - entitled Thamalia, Sancriest, and Soland after the locations each part takes place in. However, Thamalia will probably be about 50,000 words, 40,000 after edits, while Sancriest and Soland are both approaching 80,000. Much too long for a single volume of YA fiction. I would consider three separate books, but there is nothing epic in Thamalia, just a lot of talking. The best way to keep a compelling story arc and a reasonable wordcount would be to split Sancriest in half and add each half to the two other books. Then I have Thamalia at about 80,000 words and Soland at 120,000. Ish. And then that side project makes it a trilogy, I guess.
Then the three books of the Lyradis Cycle are:
Lynx's Kingdom
Lynx's War
Lynx Awakening (I have no idea what this one will actually be called, I just like the Zelda reference)
But not necessarily in that order.
But I'd still be much more comfortable with three distinct books and one side book. I just wish I could make something happen in the first third.
TL;DR - I should be writing, but I'm getting ahead of myself and worrying about publishing.