End of the First Act
At just over 71,000 words, I've effectively decided to wrap up "part one" of my novel. There are a couple of reasons for this.
One... My momentum on the project has really slowed in the past year. With numerous characters and frequent perspective shifts, the story is in constant danger of reeling into pointless territory. I often have to rewrite entire sections in order to reign it back in. That's getting frustrating. I had to teach myself to watch for the warning signs... I'm particularly prone to include organic scenes that end up accomplishing very little - failing to impart any necessary information to the reader and/or moving the story forward in some fashion.
Two... the stop-and-go process of writing has skewed my own perspective of my writing considerably. I'm becoming paranoid about pacing, though whenever I step back and read over some of the earlier sections of the story, I feel that it rolls along quite well. It's development is fairly quiet at times... introspective, I suppose. The frequent perspective shifts are necessary because much of the material exposition in the story is revealed through the principle characters' thoughts and feelings.
Every creative project I've ever undertaken has been punctuated by a need for collaborative feedback. My principle creative outlets over the years have been music and gaming. As a musician, the decisive need to work with talented colleagues has been a drive that could not be ignored (a common need amongst musicians, as it happens). I write a lot of my own music, and will occasionally make an effort to record it, but the only time I'm truly inspired to push myself and create more ellaborate musical cocktails is when I'm mixing it up with someone else's ideas and constributions.
As a Dungeon Master, I do much of the design alone... but the entire point of the experience is collaborative. All that time spent creating and developing, writing, statting, plotting and mapping would be entirely wasted and unsatisfying without the game session(s) to make it real to others, and the material grows as it's exposed to the players. My work for the next session is always determined by the events of the prior session. I've been running games pretty much every week for almost 25 years... it's that compelling.
But as far as the book goes, I have no active betas. I can't strong-arm my friends and family into reading the material, and I've written so damn much at this point that it takes hours to work through it. Roulette kept up for a long time, but then I had to revise a lot of the older material as newer stuff was written... so she's actually missing a lot. I haven't even bothered to hit her up on the past couple of chapters. Her sense of the story, though plausibly reliable, is hardly consistent. And she's really a little too close to the source material to give me a proper review on any of it.
So it's a solo effort... which is a constant struggle for me. As complicated as it is, I think it's time to include a natural sort of break in the story, hence the end of Part I. Maybe it'll liberate some of the hang-ups I've been having about the story elements.
Time for Part Two. Wish me luck.
One... My momentum on the project has really slowed in the past year. With numerous characters and frequent perspective shifts, the story is in constant danger of reeling into pointless territory. I often have to rewrite entire sections in order to reign it back in. That's getting frustrating. I had to teach myself to watch for the warning signs... I'm particularly prone to include organic scenes that end up accomplishing very little - failing to impart any necessary information to the reader and/or moving the story forward in some fashion.
Two... the stop-and-go process of writing has skewed my own perspective of my writing considerably. I'm becoming paranoid about pacing, though whenever I step back and read over some of the earlier sections of the story, I feel that it rolls along quite well. It's development is fairly quiet at times... introspective, I suppose. The frequent perspective shifts are necessary because much of the material exposition in the story is revealed through the principle characters' thoughts and feelings.
Every creative project I've ever undertaken has been punctuated by a need for collaborative feedback. My principle creative outlets over the years have been music and gaming. As a musician, the decisive need to work with talented colleagues has been a drive that could not be ignored (a common need amongst musicians, as it happens). I write a lot of my own music, and will occasionally make an effort to record it, but the only time I'm truly inspired to push myself and create more ellaborate musical cocktails is when I'm mixing it up with someone else's ideas and constributions.
As a Dungeon Master, I do much of the design alone... but the entire point of the experience is collaborative. All that time spent creating and developing, writing, statting, plotting and mapping would be entirely wasted and unsatisfying without the game session(s) to make it real to others, and the material grows as it's exposed to the players. My work for the next session is always determined by the events of the prior session. I've been running games pretty much every week for almost 25 years... it's that compelling.
But as far as the book goes, I have no active betas. I can't strong-arm my friends and family into reading the material, and I've written so damn much at this point that it takes hours to work through it. Roulette kept up for a long time, but then I had to revise a lot of the older material as newer stuff was written... so she's actually missing a lot. I haven't even bothered to hit her up on the past couple of chapters. Her sense of the story, though plausibly reliable, is hardly consistent. And she's really a little too close to the source material to give me a proper review on any of it.
So it's a solo effort... which is a constant struggle for me. As complicated as it is, I think it's time to include a natural sort of break in the story, hence the end of Part I. Maybe it'll liberate some of the hang-ups I've been having about the story elements.
Time for Part Two. Wish me luck.