I tend to write complicated books with a lot of moving parts. It is critical that I outline in detail virtually every chapter to ensure I do not leave any plot holes and everything gets resolved. There are people who don’t have any plan at all when they start writing a book and still manage to put out incredible stories (George R.R. Martin is rumored to be one of these, which is probably why he can’t finish ASOIAF. I’m betting that cat done up and wrote his butt into a corner he can’t get out of. Regardless, the man is an AMAZING writer).
I am currently writing the second book in my Eamon Tauk series, and I am at the end. Almost done. This is the crescendo. Where everything comes together. And it has Gone. Off. The. Rails. The outline has been thrown out the window. There is no longer any plan whatsoever. And I LOVE it!
Seriously, the tension is off the charts. The story is full of moral dilemmas where there just aren’t any right decisions to be made, but they have to do SOMETHING. I don’t think the reader will be able to guess where this is all going because I’m writing the damn thing and even I have no idea how this will end.
I can say that this is surprisingly motivating. I have a limited amount of time that I am able to write during any given day, and my literary productivity is the best it’s ever been, largely because I can’t wait to see what happens next.
The flip side is that I’m caught up in the moment. Typing “The End” is where the real work starts. There’s line editing, the computer read-back, rereads, Beta Reader revisions, and author copy paperback read-throughs. And every time I start the process, I get this feeling of trepidation wondering if what I spent months on is going to suck.
That happened with Olongapo Earp. I was so happy with it when I finished, but when I read through it, there were about four chapters that were kind of a slog. It took me forever to figure out how to make those fun. The opposite extreme was Narman’s Pyke, the first book in this series. Even though I wrote it, when I read it, I got so engrossed in it that I kept forgetting to look for errors.
Moloch’s Garden better be like that. My original outline had this work being at about 100,000 words. I’m at 97,996 right now and I think I have about 8,000 to go. That’s going to be a lot of reading.
They say that you should write the book you want to read. And you better because if you’re doing it right, you’re going to be reading it over, and over, and over again.