At sixes and sevens
After months and months of GRINDING with my long WIP What Happens in Vegas, over the past few days I've had a period of intense productivity, which has weirdly left me feeling very anxious.
I just did a word count, and my document, which is almost 200 pages long, has 63k words. That includes the 25k of published material, several half-finished chapters, countless pages of notes, and countless pages of cut or discarded material.
For the longest time, the climax of the fic - about six chapters of interrogations and entr'actes, was an amorphous blob of notes, snippets of scenes, and conflicting ideas.
Now it's a clear, fairly orderly road map with large chunks written (or at least drafted).
Many of the issues I'd dwelt on for ages have been resolved: POV, order of revelation, tone. Many of the minor plot points I'd waffled over are now distinct, allowing me to discard inferior ideas. Certain small struggles, such as how (or whether) to reveal a particularly sticky piece of info, have been resolved.
There's now this big whooshing feeling inside me, like a stiff wind blowing through a pipe. The sensation of working on THIS fic, as it is right now and not how it was a week ago, is completely... er... novel.
It's the same way I used to feel going down a hill. On the way up I was afraid I'd run out of steam before peaking; now with gravity on my side I'm afraid of going head over heels.
It's an interesting place to be.
My personal goal, my personal journey as an author right now, that which through CI fanfic I hope to manifest, is a detached, workmanlike relationship to writing, along with the stamina and problem-solving tools to enable me to complete long stories.
CI has helped me very much on that path, and I feel like I'm really getting there.
I just did a word count, and my document, which is almost 200 pages long, has 63k words. That includes the 25k of published material, several half-finished chapters, countless pages of notes, and countless pages of cut or discarded material.
For the longest time, the climax of the fic - about six chapters of interrogations and entr'actes, was an amorphous blob of notes, snippets of scenes, and conflicting ideas.
Now it's a clear, fairly orderly road map with large chunks written (or at least drafted).
Many of the issues I'd dwelt on for ages have been resolved: POV, order of revelation, tone. Many of the minor plot points I'd waffled over are now distinct, allowing me to discard inferior ideas. Certain small struggles, such as how (or whether) to reveal a particularly sticky piece of info, have been resolved.
There's now this big whooshing feeling inside me, like a stiff wind blowing through a pipe. The sensation of working on THIS fic, as it is right now and not how it was a week ago, is completely... er... novel.
It's the same way I used to feel going down a hill. On the way up I was afraid I'd run out of steam before peaking; now with gravity on my side I'm afraid of going head over heels.
It's an interesting place to be.
My personal goal, my personal journey as an author right now, that which through CI fanfic I hope to manifest, is a detached, workmanlike relationship to writing, along with the stamina and problem-solving tools to enable me to complete long stories.
CI has helped me very much on that path, and I feel like I'm really getting there.