A Novel Progress Update

Thanks to Dave Wilson, I now have a lovely progress meter. As you can see, I'm twelve percent nearer my goal. I have to admit, though, it's been like pulling teeth, but the stuff that's flowing from my fingers through the keyboard and into the manuscript is surprising me.

Here's the thing: I came up with the basic idea for this novel years ago, and I formulated an outline of the first fifteen chapters or so. At first, I didn't know where the novel would go from there, but eventually I admitted that what I really did not want to happen had to happen (no way to avoid it), and I had a plan for the ending.

Well, with a few extra chapters thrown in--content that just presented itself as I was writing and worked--I got to the end of Chapter 16 and just stopped. I still had a few chapters to go in the outline, but I let the thing languish on my hard drive for about two years. I never stopped thinking about it, though. Back in the spring, when Jeff was working like crazy on his novel, I opened the file again, read what I had written, and liked it. I decided to go back to it, and I wrote to the end of the outline: through Chapter 18. And then I abandoned it again.

Then came NaNoWriMo, and I thought, well, maybe I should give the concept a try, at least. Now I'm in the midst of Chapter 19, but I've already written Chapter 20 (I knew that I had to write something--a lot, actually--between chapters 18 and 20, but the inspiration for Chapter 20 hit, so I let it flow). Now I'm backtracking just a little. But I'm in uncharted territory, now. I have several scenes that I have to fit in somewhere, but I'm making my way into the second act, and I'm not exactly sure where it might go or how these various scenes will work themselves in. That is making this venture rather exciting, but it's also pushing me into nail-biting territory.

Let's see if I can stick to it, and let's see where this puppy is at about 80,000.

My pal Lee wants to see excerpts... hmmm. I'm not sure I want to expose the latest prose to the light of day...yet. Maybe when I get nearer the end...