Checking In after Six Months without Novel Writing
Image via LibreShot (https://libreshot.com/books-2/)
Since early this year, I’ve been focusing only on short fiction and poetry, and not trying to write any novels or even novellas. It’s been a little over six months, so it’s time to check in.
If you read my recap from last week, you probably noticed that there’s a novella on it now. I got an idea in May that stuck with me enough that I decided to write it, and I figured out that if I could keep it around novella length, I could draft it in the month of July.
Amusingly, the novella I’m currently writing isn’t the idea that I came up with initially. Well, it’s related. I knew it was going to be fantastical history, and I had a rough idea of the plot. It spun out wildly to involve a whole bunch of research, and I was getting the details nailed down when I thought to check on one little historical fact … and the whole house of cards came tumbling down. So I set aside that research for a future project (maybe in November …), and I stripped it back to the basics of the earlier idea. By changing the setting and time period, the first idea would work, so that’s what I decided to do, rather than try to reconfigure the second idea (especially because I found the flaw about 10 days before July started). I think I know what I’m doing with that second idea at this point, but it would have been tough to figure it out and implement it quickly enough for it to be my July project.
I think I like the idea of writing fantastical history enough that it will sustain me through this novella. If I get to the end of July and never want to look at it again, that’s okay. As it is, I’m writing 1,000 words a day to get it done, and it’s manageable (though it does mean writing 1,000 words EVERY day, even on my normal non-writing days). And as such, I’m doing the bulk of the weekday writing on my lunch break, which generally works out pretty nicely.
I’ll check in again next month with my thoughts on how it went. But for now, I’m at least dipping my toes back into longer pieces. We’ll see how long it lasts!
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