Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Jump Zone angst

I just passed the 75K mark in my latest wip, Jump Zone. A very small part of me is pleased because I've never written anything this long before. *yay*
But I'm groaning because I should be typing 'the end', except it's no where in sight :( therefore, I am a terrible judge of plot and/or pacing, take your pick. And I may eventually have to chop very large chunks of it out because if I continue to ramble along at my current pace, I've easily got another 10-15 K before finishing.
And people... it's just not THAT kind of book. It's not supposed to be all introspective and deep. It's supposed to be a futuristic adventure with bit of fun and action.

But... I don't feel like I should hurry it along at this point or it will seem just that... hurried along. Don't you hate books like that? Where you sense that the author just wanted it DONE ALREADY?
*looks to heaven* Please don't let that be me. sigh.

7 comments:

Leah Braemel said...

It's your first draft, right? So don't worry about word count at this stage. Write the danged book until you feel it's ready to have 'the end' typed on it. AFTER that, THEN you can go through and decide upon pacing and if any scenes need to be chopped/combined/whatever. But in the meantime, just go with the flow, girl!

Amy Ruttan said...

Leah's right, ramble on woman. It's a first draft. Once that first draft is done then chop.

You're doing awesome. Isn't amazing when you've written a long piece, longer than you've ever written before?

I did that last fall when I finished a historical and it sat at 93 and I had never written anything over 80.

Rene said...

Wow, I generally have the opposite problem. The genres I used to write required 100K and I had a hard time sticking to that. Now I need to keep my word counts a little shorter and it is tough. I'm at 77K of a planned 85K. I can probably get away with 90K so that's kind of where I'm aiming.

The important thing is to give the book its proper end. Dot your i's and cross your t's then worry about word count.

Shelley Munro said...

Hey, Wylie, that's what first drafts are for. Just spew out all those words and worry about it later during the editing process.

Happy writing. :)

Thomma Lyn said...

I agree with what everyone else has said -- let the words flow, get the story down, as much of it as you wan for the first draft. Then let your inner editor have at it for the second draft. But for now... flow, flow, flow, my friend!

Thomma Lyn said...

ACK! Typo alert: I meant "get as much as you can"

J.K. Coi said...

I feel for you sweetie. I’m at 65k on my own wip and it should be winding up about now, but there’s a decided lack of closure happening and we still don’t have our black moment. I needed to step back from it and so I started something new and now I’m 5000 into that one. I wonder if I could just put them together and call it a day?