Echoes in a Hollow Space

I don't know how near, but at last I can see the end of Charged with Folly looming on the horizon. And it caught me all unawares!

I've been worried the last month because it seemed I was veering off onto another one of my infamous tangents. I wasn't at all sure how it related to the main body of the story. I kept writing, hoping that I would either quickly find its relevance to the story, or it would become evident that I'd tricked myself. If I had tricked myself, it would mean chucking a lot of work, but fighting this thread of narrative wasn't working, either. When I fought it, I got stalled. I just had to go with it.

Then late last week everything fell into place. I knew where the tangent was taking me, how it related to the larger story, and, it turns out, it wasn't a tangent at all, but an integral part of the puzzle. Once I saw that, the ending rose out of mists and dark waters—and it's not all that far away!

There may yet be snags ahead, but right now it looks like "Land ho!" and clear sailing to port. Arrrr!


Random quote of the day:

"We have a habit of turning out to be what we're supposed to be, regardless of whether we like it or not, or know it or not."

—K. J. Parker, Shadow

Note: Until I did a google image search to illustrate this quote with filters off, I did not realize how many online porn stars were named Destiny. (Do not try this at home unless you really do want an eyeful.)

I suppose I should talk more about that writing thing here, but it's so boring.  No, not other people's writing things, but my own.  Because, basically, I'm just slogging away right now, getting through the heavy revision phase of the second draft.  Not much to report day-to-day except that I'm doing it.  Besides, I'm just not the faithful diarist type. 

However, yesterday I did accomplish something of note:  my word count actually went down.  Yes!  I managed to cut something.  True, it was only about a page and a half worth, but the word count on this beast has been slowly creeping up—which is seriously not a good thing.  That's mostly due, I think, to clarifying and straightening out some very twisted timelines.  I haven't been too worried about cutting this time around because the problems in other areas, in mechanics, seemed larger.  So unless something is clearly superfluous  fat and padding, I give it a reprieve until next time.  Once I have a straighter ms., timeline-wise, backstory-wise, I can worry about the other stuff.  I find that if I try to accomplish too much at one time—take on all monsters in one battle—it can weaken my efforts.  I get a better rewrite if I offset my battles.  So I make one pass to clean up mechanics, followed by another to clean up aesthetics.  Then I sincerely hope it's time to send the sucker out.

This story was a really complicated one in which what happened in the past was just as important as present action because what happened in the past is the root cause and prime motivator for the story.  (Though some may argue with me there.)  And since what happened in the past was often complicated, the timelines, et al., got complicated.  Sometimes overly so.  And sometimes I fell in love with peripheral characters and didn't know when to keep them down to one or two succinct paragraphs; and sometimes letting them have their say illuminated new aspects of the main story.  It's always difficult to walk the line between intrusive tangent and deepening  a story.

But there is no better remedy to "my precious prose" syndrome then to give myself a little space.  Time is the greatest editor of them all.  Things that I wouldn't have dreamed of cutting a year ago now seem perfectly disposable to me.  I doubt I can hack 25k off this beast, but you never know.  Once the cutting starts, sometimes the blood flows freely.

And on that happy metaphor, adieu...

Finished through:   chapter 28

Left to go:  seven chapters  (Groan) (Technically, six chapters plus an epilogue)

Word count: 149,800--ugly, ugly