Tuesday, December 04, 2007

and thousands to go before I sleep

November was a busy month… So I didn’t do much blogging. Apologies!

It was a huge month for writing, though. As my draft meanders toward its end, it has been easier and easier to get to my writing desk. The action is speeding toward the climax, and my characters have been more vocal, demanding all my attention and even whispering to me at inopportune times. (I feel so furtive, scribbling notes during church. Yikes!) I hope to finish the draft by Saturday!

It truly was a month for words. Though I opted not to do NaNoWriMo this year, I still wrote over 50,000 words (the NaNoWriMo goal) on my draft. Amazing! I began the month with 61,200 words and ended it with 112,400. And now, just a few days into December, it’s at 120,100. (That is an enormous amount of words, and probably is much longer than the approved manuscript length. Revision should trim it back a lot… I hope!)

When I was in my weight training class at Calvin, we had a few “max rep” (maximum repetition) days. In our workouts those days, we would lift until we couldn’t raise the weight one more time. (I promise this connects back to writing.)

The first max rep day was a mixed experience. I was achingly sore the next day, exhausted, and more than a little furious with our instructor. It was painful! It was demanding! ... At the same time, I was surprised and pleased to see that I could do more reps than I’d expected. There was more strength in me than I realized. I dreaded the next workout, though, certain that I wouldn’t be able to lift a single weight.

Wrong. The next workout was wonderful. I could lift larger weights more times--a great feeling! (And then, of course, I applauded my instructor’s genius and didn’t doubt him again.) It was a shot in the arm, so to speak, for my entire workout. I embraced the other max rep days and had the same results--each one boosted my lifting to a new level.

Last Thursday, I declared a “max rep” writing day, hoping the same principle would apply. I spent nearly twelve hours at my computer and cranked out over 10,000 words--nearly forty pages. In one day. I had hoped for 7,000 or so… I was delighted! Of course, afterwards I couldn’t see straight, had a roaring headache, and my fingers were puffy from all that typing.

But the next day, instead of having nothing left to say, I wrote 3,900 words without breaking a sweat. (My usual daily output had been between 1000 and 3000 words, and it occasionally felt like pulling teeth.) The same thing happened yesterday. I sat down with my draft “just for a minute,” and when I first paused, I was astonished to see I’d written over a thousand words without feeling a thing.

Hence, my hopes are to have the draft done by Saturday. I’m hoping, too, that there are just twenty thousand words left… though that may be too low of a guess, I’m not sure. My poor heroine is having a terrible week--this is when all the worst parts of her story come crashing down on her. She’s stumbling toward the huge showdown at the end, which she’ll barely survive. Poor kid. I’m trying to make it up to her, though, with a happy ending.

Once the draft is done, I’ll turn all my energy to preparing the proposal. My earlier dreams of sending that out mid-December are impossible, but I’m hoping I can send it mid-January. (Let’s rephrase that: I must send it out mid-January.) And so I’ll research editors and agents, and I’ll bury myself in a few “how to write a proposal” books. I know that proposals contain the first three chapters and a synopsis of the story. But what else is there? I’ve heard rumors of marketing information (this is the first of three books--I think that’s a good thing), and an author biography (which is woefully short: I’m a college grad with high hopes). What else? I’ll need to find out.

So, we’ll see! It’s daunting, this part of the process, but it must be done.

November was full of other things, as well, but this is long enough already. So, stay tuned, and I’ll fill you in soon… --jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 12/04 at 04:47 PM
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