The middle grade novel I’m working on reached 45K words yesterday—Huzzah!
Although progress has been slow, it’s been steady… I steadily write a bunch of words one day, and then nothing for the next few. Rinse and repeat. At a writing retreat many years ago, SarahP and I called ourselves “binge” writers. I guess you could also call it the “flood vs. trickle” method, only even my floods are kinda small.
Continuing with the water metaphors, I’m about to enter the “cascading action scenes” portion of the novel. I used that phrase to describe the end of JADE TIGER when I was writing it, and it’s become a useful way of thinking about the final rush of action leading up to the climax of the novel.
The challenge I’m facing now is that my outline is too packed. Since my PoV character alternates with each chapter, I’ve had to plan a bit more than normal to ensure that certain scenes are told from the most effective PoV. This is creating havoc when I reach the right length for a chapter but have only accomplished half the scenes I had planned. So far, I’m rolling with the punches and enjoying rethinking as I go. I’m not sure I’ll be so enamored of this alternating scheme when I start in on revisions, though. In any case, I look forward to reaching that point.
Still love the book, still love the characters, even after 45K. I’m already dreaming about the next books in the series.
Cascading actions scenes, here I come!
Hey Jenn — congrats! Glad to see you're working away at this book. (I'd like to volunteer to be a 1st reader, if I could.)
Feels good, getting back into the writing groove again — I'm slowly doing the same. It's a wonder what some sleep will do for ya…