Installment #9: Exhilarated!

Writing ByTrying My Hand At Writing A Novel

Apr 20

That’s how I’m feeling this week. I’m 51,399 words and barreling forward at a pretty good clip. Reworking the outline helped a lot. It gave me a clear path to follow and, while I still haven’t gone back to smooth out any rough edges, I’m excited about where I’m heading.

The more I write, the clearer the themes have defined themselves. The more the characters speak, the better I’ve become at listening to them. The town itself has come alive and I can see that all of these people have history here and secrets… so many delicious, sad, and terrible secrets that have held them back from becoming who they’ve always wanted to be.

I’m not all that worried about this being a messy, brain dump of a draft. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it probably will be. Ideas are just thrown in willy-nilly and may not even make a lot of sense to anyone but me. Even though I haven’t made all of the changes I know I will need to in order for the narrative to flow in one direction, I’ve kept a running tab in my head of what needs to be reworked, added to, and changed altogether. All I want is for me to have something of a first draft to work off of and shape no matter how frighteningly bonkers it might feel right now.

Tonally, this is darker than anything I’ve ever done. I’m used to writing escapist, fun, genre-y drama, and straight-out comedy. This is calling upon a whole new level of emotional work. I sometimes have to put it away for a few days, refusing to open up the little blue folder it’s hiding away in on my desktop. When I’m ready, I click it open and work for a while until I need another break.

This feels like the halfway mark. Everything that needs to be set up has been put in place and, like a roller coaster that’s slowly crept up the incline, I’m on the plateau looking down at the downward side. Hopefully, things will only pick up from here.

I’m going to share the opening to the book with you. This is the one thing that has kept the story fixated in my mind and has been my guiding light through this whole process. In a way, it’s infused with character-goal-obstacle even though the character and goal are implied more than outright stated.

It’s also what I come back to when I think I may have lost the thread because it forces me to think about what I’m striving to deliver… a haunting mystery with a surprising outcome:

PROLOGUE

Augie Rowan was last seen at 4:20pm on a Tuesday.