Current Project Part II

I made my decision to go ahead and begin working on my young adult fantasy novel a couple weeks ago. Part of what's exciting about it is the idea of working much faster on something than I'm used to. When I'm heavily engrossed in a project I like to set a daily goal of 2,000 words. This is absolutely manageable, and it keeps me going at a good clip. At this rate, I can do an entire first draft of a 90,000 word novel within a couple months, and that's even allowing for days when I don't meet the goal or I tack a weekend off completely or whatever. But with this fantasy book, I saw it as a bit different. Partly because it's aimed at younger readers, I saw it as being a bit shorter than what I've written in the past. Instead of 90,000, a book of 60,000 words seems about right. Also, since the idea has been bouncing around my head for a while I started writing knowing for the most part where I was headed. Of course I still had large holes that needed filling, but I assumed those would come as I discovered the world and grew to know the characters. So I set out with the goal of completing a rough draft within a few weeks. Basically I'm moving soon, and I don't want my progress to be disrupted during that time.

So I broke it down and came up with a daily word count goal. If I did 2,000 words a day, then I could have 60,000 at the end of a month. 4,000 would result in a draft in 15 days. So I figured that somewhere in between was the appropriate daily objective. The chapters for this book are working out to each be in the 4,000 word range. So my basic goal is to write a full chapter each day if I can manage it (4,000+ is lovely), and if I can't get that much done, then to at least hit 2,000 words. This way I'm steadily progressing even if I don't always get as much as would be best.

I began two weeks ago Sunday, and for the first four days, I wrote a chapter a day. Then I slowed a bit and was still hitting the 2,000 word a day goal, but was taking a couple days to finish a chapter. Then I sped back up again, and then slowed again. Anyway, at present I have hit at least 2,000 words every day for the past 15 days with only one exception, and that day I came in around 1,600 words, so it wasn't too bad. Right now I'm halfway through chapter 11 of what I expect to be 15 chapters total. I have about 42,000 words of that 60,000 word mark, so I'm getting close. I fully expect to finish the draft this week, making it by far the fastest I've written anything of this length.

It's been fun to tackle a project like this for several reasons. One: speed. I've read about writers just plowing through books in a week or whatever and wondered how that could be possible. I think Stephen King wrote The Running Man in a week (those claims must only apply to the first draft, however). Or there's the famous case of Keruak writing On The Road in a matter of days, typing the whole draft onto that giant scroll of typing paper so he wouldn't have to slow down to change sheets. And I've discovered there is something energizing and exciting about moving so quickly. I have no delusions that what I've come up with is brilliant. I already know I have tons of corrections to make as far as inconsistencies go in plot details. I've made a bunch of notes about things choices I made later in the story that have implications earlier on. And that's not even considering the rest of the rewriting process that would happen with any book.

Two: plot. As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to read a lot of fantasy, but about a decade ago I moved on to other things. The majority of my reading in recent years has been what might be termed "literary" in the sense that it's about normal people dealing with regular life stuff. That's what I most enjoy, and that's what I've been writing for the past few years. So to switch gears has been like a great vacation since most of my other stories don't hinge on plot. There's that old adage, which I suppose has some validity even though, like most such maxims, it has exceptions and doesn't necessarily stand up to careful critique, but anyway it asserts that plot and character are on a continuum, and when one goes up in development and importance, the other goes down. So basically, a heavily action oriented story doesn't have time to develop the characters into fully three dimensional people, and the stories that most fully explore the inner lives of characters and reveal them as complex humans have little actually happening. In most of what I write, I like to have something going on, but the events take a back seat to the characters and what they're thinking about and how they interact with each other or whatever. But in this fantasy story, I have way more plot. My protagonist is transported to a world of magic, and the world is in the midst of a war, and there's a prophecy concerning his importance, and there's kidnapping and an evil wizard and and and and and . . . So that's fun. I suspect one of the major things I address in rewriting is to carefully go through and make sure that the characters are coming alive in the way they need to, that I haven't slid so far into the plot side of things that I neglect my characters because, after all, if I as a reader don't care about the people in the story, then what difference does it make what crazy stuff happens to them?

Three: rediscovering the fun of stories for younger readers. I wrote previously about not having read much fantasy in recent years, but I realized the other day that the one area I have actually continued to read in that genre has been children's books. In the years during which I don't think I've picked up more than two or three adult fantasies, I've reread or listened to audiobooks (or both) of the Chronicles of Prydain (still one of my all time favorites), Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, and others. So I wasn't as unprepared as I initially worried I might be to tackle such a writing project. But in order to further understand what I'm attempting, I began looking at some books that are currently on bookstore shelves in the genre, and that has been so much fun. There are some great books out there. I am absolutely in love with the Spiderwick Chronicles. Artemis Fowl was fun. There's one called Erec Rex that is a blast.

Four: being engrossed. The major reason I write is because I love doing it. Ultimately, yes, I hope to publish. If I could actually make a living at it, that would be awesome. Not because I want to be a famous writer or anything like that, but simply because it would mean that I could do for my job something that I would do for fun anyway instead of doing something that always felt like work. I know writing is hard work, but it's more fun than it is frustrating, wheras jobs I've had are on the reverse of that. But as much fun as writing is, it's not always on the same level. During the last stages of my previous novel, it was definitely leaning toward the hard work and not too fun side of things simply because I was at the point of going through and trying to fix grammar and typos and little things. It was tedious and didn't transfix me the way earlier stages of the process can. But now again, for the past two weeks, I've simply been having a blast as I sit down to write, and during the rest of the day when the story plays out in my head and I solve the puzzles of how to continue forward and how to bring everything together in a satisfying conclusion.

Five: publishability. I didn't begin writing this book with thoughts of publication, but as I've continued on, the idea has occurred to me more. In general genre writing is easier to get out there than literary stuff. I hope I can find an agent for my literary novel and then get it to a publisher, but I don't know. I think it's strong, but the market is so tough, it might never happen. And not to say that getting this YA fantasy published will be a cinch, but it seems like I'll face fewer of the difficulties than with an adult literary novel. At the moment I have no plans for additional fantasy stories. I don't especially see this one as the first of a series, although I'm sure it could be possible. But if somehow I hit it big with this and fell into the possibility of a career writing this kind of book, I would love it. That wouldn't be my top choice since I'd still rather write literary stuff, and I have more ideas for those novels at the moment. But it would still be far more preferable than the kind of day job scenario I see for myself for the next thirty years.