Angry little men with pointy teeth… 1173 words, 85,088 total.

Today I just ended up cleaning up what I wrote yesterday — which left be a bit short of words. Except I wasn’t planning on getting any countable words today.

I had to clean up yesterday’s work and build on it today, though so that I could know I was building the last lines for scenes on solid ground.

I accomplished that. And I met the elves, from whom came the title of this post.

Tomorrow, I’m going to have to replot the final scenes and chapters of the book in 30-word lines per scene, to make sure I don’t overrun. 

I still have a lot to accomplish in this book, and only six more chapters in which to do it, and up to 13 scenes in which to do it.

At this point, writing while staying inside the bounds of the planned wordcount (which is what I have to hit in order to also hit my five-book deadline) becomes a lot like writing a sonnet. It’s structured, but it can’t feel structured. It hits specific story beats, but the beats cannot be either predictable or ordinary.

Its… well… a lot of fun. 

Getting it right becomes both an adventure and a game I get to play that is challenging and entertaining and very, very difficult.

So. Today went well. Everything I’ve now written fits with everything else.

Tomorrow I will the three hours (and possibly more) writing three-hundred ninety words (at most), that will give the last six chapters and up to thirteen scenes of the book a compelling momentum, and an exciting, complete ending.

And a few hints toward Book 4.

If I can do that in just three hours, I’ll be thrilled. If not, I’ll carry it over to Friday. Wish me luck.


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Comments

3 responses to “Angry little men with pointy teeth… 1173 words, 85,088 total.”

  1. dragon Avatar
    dragon

    A week late, but luck!

  2. Holly Avatar
    Holly

    Hi, Jamie. I’m glad you find the blog posts helpful.

    And yeah… writing is supposed to be a joyful, exciting process. Not every day — there will always be crappy days doing this. But most of time, it should be something you’re happy to get out of bed in the morning to do.

  3. Jamie DeBree Avatar

    I just wanted to say thank you for being so transparent with your process. I’ve taken your revision course and learned a *lot* from it (this was some years back), and I’m trying to find my own initial writing process again after floundering for awhile (slow going, but I’m getting there). “Watching” you work here is really helpful to me, and seeing the joy you get on the great days is just a lot of fun and reminds me what writing should be like.

    So thank you. And happy writing. 🙂

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