#ROW80 Midweek Check-In

I am 9 scenes from the end of DOTH!

My initial NaNo frenzy has slowed down somewhat.  I clocked 658 Sunday, 1009 Monday, and 1339 Tuesday.  I broke 97k yesterday.

I am getting SO FREAKING CLOSE, y’all.  This makes it VERY VERY hard to focus on…well, ANYTHING not fiction related.  I’ve turned ADD about everything except this book.

I anticipate that there is somewhere between 15-18k remaining to this first draft, and I’m gonna be pushing VERY VERY hard to finish that draft before Thanksgiving so that I can take a few days off to wallow in Days of Blood and Starlight and The Lost Prince (and maybe doing some plotting on those steampunk plot bunnies) before diving into finishing Riven.  And of course, revisions.

Revisions will actually come first.  I want to knock this draft out, then take a couple of days to let it sit.  Then I’ll read through to do the first pass clean up, filling in brackets I left along the way, fleshing a few things out, checking for consistency and the like.  THEN I’ll send it to my crit partners.  It is, as I have noted before, a long ass book, so I figure it’ll take them a bit to get through it.  And during that time, I intend to blast my way through Riven.  I aim to finish it by the time I go back to work January…whenever I go back after the New Year.

I started DOTH on December 7th last year.  So…yeah, it’s gonna take me ALMOST a full on year to finish it.  It’s such a HUGE book (not just length wise) compared to what I’ve done before.  Rich in world, rich in theme…it’s the biggest, most complex story I’ve ever told.  Now that I’m nearing the end, seeds for the second book in the trilogy are starting to take root and send out shoots of ideas.  And that’s good.  I’m making notes, though one or two other projects will be in the pipeline before I start Master of the Hunt (MOTH).  There’s still one major question for the trilogy that I do not know the answer two.  I’m not worried–yet.  It doesn’t come to bear until book 3 and SURELY something will present itself by then.

I have become such a rabid plotter over the last few years that it’s been really astonishing the surprises that have cropped up while writing this book.  I’ll have one line summaries of scenes…and then the scene will turn into something totally unexpected–while still technically fitting that summary.  I really truly love when that happens.  It has, of course, meant that I’ve written and discarded over 25k words, which makes the efficiency nut in me just a little bit crazed.  But still.  I’m doing so much better this year than I thought I would just a few months ago.  I’m already over 150k for the year, and I’m on target to finish DOTH, Riven, and Whisper of Shadow (my Mirus short story in Magical Mayhem) all in a year.  Which will end up somewhere between 183-200k total written.  That makes me ECSTATIC.

Oh, the possibilities.

 

6 thoughts on “#ROW80 Midweek Check-In

  1. Wooo! Go Kait! I can feel your enthusiasm and energy in this post. You are a powerhouse of writing right now! Can’t wait to read the soon coming post announcing DOTH’s completion!

    And I had to tell you my sister finished Red and LOVED it! I gave her a couple YA books and she said Red was her fave! She’s interested in more of your books, but doesn’t have an e-reader now. Let me know about other print editions if they’re available!

  2. Congrats on the progress! I completely get what you’re saying about the plotting, but still being surprised by what happens when you fill out what you had as one line in your outline. I find that a nice balance. My outline is actually a brain dump of what I intend to accomplish with the scene, often very short on details. I get more action that way, and enjoy the writing process more. Best of luck in the next couple of weeks! Open the floodgates!

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