As you may remember from posts past, my overall plan was to finish this write through of the story by June 6th, which is a Saturday, and when I would start playing my video game reward. I worked on writing the end of the story, while reminding myself it is all rough draft to keep from over analyzing, from the outline I made a while ago. I stumbled around the final fight scene, then I started in on the final scene and I just started writing and things were just coming together. It was making sense, and I was really happy with it. I tweaked the epilogue (which I had written before as a goal point) and then I sat back and thought ‘Wow, this might actually be good, like not just ‘I got through it’, but good.’
I gushed to my husband about how happy I was that the story was good, even though the first half and second half were not the same length. So my husband asked how long they were. I told him. Then he said, “You know that means your story is only 55k words, right?”
Of course I didn’t know that. Who the heck just adds two numbers together in their head? Suffice it to say, I very quickly went from being proud of myself to realizing I didn’t have a novel length draft. (Much less a fantasy novel length draft.) And while my draft is rather rough in some places, and will need some scenes added in and such, the idea of being able to add 35k words did not seem plausible.
This is what having a mentor is for. She suggested that after letting it rest for a while, I should read through it again and find a subplot that could be expanded on. That sounded like a perfect idea to me, reminding me that sometimes seemingly horrible problems have simple answers.
So since Wednesday, my draft has been sitting, and I keep feeling like I should be writing, and then I remember that I’m taking a break. It’s a surreal experience as always. Sort of like the first week after I graduated from college when I realized I would never have to go to school again. Like ever. 😀
Worry not, as I am currently alpha reading my husband’s book (which I’ve been promising to do forever) so I’m not completely out of the writing game. I also started playing my reward game.
