Results of Ruminations

I did it. I finished writing Writ in Blood  today at about 9:42 pm. I've been writing pretty much non-stop since 1:15. I'm tired. I'm euphoric. I'm doubtful. I'm ecstatic. I'm dizzy with disbelief (literally). And I'm indulging in (I think) some well earned pride at having accomplished so much. In greater detail: I started the day off later than I wanted because I had the quidditch team party that I mentioned last week. That went really well, weather not withstanding. It was a great end to a fun year, and I was really proud of the game we played, which was one of the best games we have ever been involved with. We had fun afterwards, but I bailed out as soon as I could: I wanted to write. Because of the party, my eating schedule was all screwy. As I mentioned above, I arrived at UVU about 1:15 and I got to work right away. After finishing one chapter (which put me over the 300,000 word mark), I went ahead and took a break, swinging by McDonald's for a

I knew this would happen. You see? This is why I don't outline. I put in a lot of effort in the outlines and try to write it all out beforehand, but you know what happens? Days like this. See, I got an almost record number of words done today (8,177 to be exact), and while I'll keep most of them, they spin the story in a completely different direction. Part of that comes from the fact that I went ahead and put in the twist that I had thought about from last week. I decided to go ahead and do it for the simple reason that I wasn't thrilled by the ending that I had outlined. I thought that a little bit of a twist would spice things up and thrill me a bit more. It sure did that. Unfortunately for me, it also shot the rest of the outline to pieces. I'm not certain how to patch it up, so I think I'll probably throw it away and redraft the stupid thing. Ironically, I've been changing the document a lot on my word processor, and to keep track of the changes I'

Boy, I am tired. I've been mulling over the ending of this book so much, I just want it done with so I can start editing it. I am tired of writing this book, but in a different way than any of the others. It's mostly because the ending is there--it's just taking forever to get through it--that is wearisome. That's a nice change from wanting it to be over because I have something else in mind that I want to start. Of course, I'm still nervous about the ending. It's fitting, but I can't say that it's super cool , y'know? I want it to be really fulfilling, and I think I have some good parts, but that isn't really enough for me. If I've just taken the reader through a 300,000 word journey, I want the ending to feel like it was worth the trip--and that the trip was fun while there, too. I came to an interesting crossroads today, though. I could either make one of the major players in the book be a bad guy--sudden flip that you could kind of see

Bad news, everyone! I've decided that I'll have to make a sequel to this. It's either that or there's going to be the loss of one of the coolest monsters I've come up with since the breathrobbers*. So I guess it's only kinda bad news, as I may be able to modify it in such a way that I can keep the Weeping Men and  close things up the way that I need to. Another option is that I can include all of my Weeping Men parts as a short story compilation that would be adjacent to the actual novel, much like the piece that I started writing on the plane to Orlando . My idea is that I could have the book itself be published the traditional way (ideal, for me, as that's my actual dream), but do my part to generate interest by having two or three different short stories that I would distribute for free. I've got a few thousand words in the abovelinked short, and I could, if I wanted, take the monsters out of this and have them be doing all the same things, but in