The WAL

Well, the first draft is anyway. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.

Typed ‘The End’ just a few minutes ago. Almost anticlimactic in a way. After five months, and I started the book exactly five months ago on Christmas Day (yes, I know what the clock says, but this is still the 25th for me since I’m on nights right now), and 108k words, those last two are a bit of a let down.

Not that the book is really done, mind you. I’ve said before that I have a couple of sub-plots I’d like to flesh out more and I’ll add to that two or three characters I’d like to spend a little more time on, but those, as well as any logical inconsistencies and other plot issues, are for the second draft, which I have no intention of starting until I’ve finished the first draft of “Skip to My Luu”. I’m setting a tentative goal of Labour Day for that, which doesn’t allow all that much time for my neglected short fiction, but I have a couple of stories in (slow) progress on that front. Lots of editing to do, though.

But gods it feels good to be done. It’s a huge, steaming pile of something unpleasant but I think that once all of the unpleasantness is scraped away, the core of a decent story is there and might come out nicely after a couple of more drafts. And it is, in fact, more than 4 times longer than anything else I’ve previously finished. A major accomplishment for me.

But I’m not sure I can take the rest of the night off. The next novel is calling.

Ah, the Stanley Cup finals are about to begin and I know that many of you share my thoughts and sentiments on the good old hockey game: counting the days until it’s finally over and goes away for a few months. Not very many months, mind you - from early June to some time in September - and we still have to put up with endless boring commentaries on baseball in the meantime, but any break is a good one and I’ll take whatever I can get.

It doesn’t disappear completely, of course. To fuel the hockey addiction to that small, vocal minority, some sports stations play “classic” hockey games from bygone days during th esummer months. I’m certain that eveyrone wonders why, but it doesn’t stop them. I suppose it’s a tribute to the old adage: “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”

I’m willing to try, though. So here’s hoping that one team sweeps the other in four games, and I don’t care which, so it finishes a week sooner.  Happy end of th ehockey season, everyone!

Haven’t done any real writing yet today, just a few hundred words of transcription on Skip to My Luu to which I’m about 400 words shy of being caught up to my handwritten version.  As for Dragon Summer, I think I might be done by the end of the weekend but no promises.

Yes, I know I promised to complain about something else last week, and there are no shortage of idiocies in the world, but there are other things going on and the big one is the near completion of my first novel. Finished the second last chapter last night and, I’m moving into that last Chapter today which I hope to have done by the end of the weekend. And I will, if it’s only as long as I think it’s going to be. Another recent short chapter turned out to be more than 6300 words long.

Two short conversations, a flashback, and a coronation. Future revisions and additions notwithstanding, I think it might come close to 108k.

As for the next project, well…

I’m actually debating whether this actually is a 70k word novel. My plotting is getting a bit more detailed and I think it’s going to work out a little bit shorter, probably around 60k. That said, my original estimate for Dragon Summer was 90k and look how that’s worked out. So I’m going to leave the estimate at 70k and base the progress count on that. If it’s 70 by the time I’m finished, great. If it’s 80, that’s fine too. If it’s 52, so be it. What will be, will be and I’ll pronounce it done when it’s done.

And I’ve started plotting on a project I’m code naming Heroes Inc. Yes, really. This one feels like it’s going to be on the short side. More than a novella but not a brick. I’m thinking 50-ish as a round number, but who knows. I don’t feel overextended. Yet.

Pre-empting the short rant I had planned today, many years ago I engaged in a disturbingly short speculative discussion with a friend of mine whom I considered overly religious but was too polite to say anything to him about it.  And before anyone gets upset about that statement, my definition of overly religious is when it intrudes into every conversation you have and you feel the need to convince your friends of the right of your beliefs.

“Do you ever wonder if there’s anybody else out there?” I asked.  Seventeen and not really sure that I knew everything but just coming to grips with how little I really did know.

“No.”

“Really?”

He nodded.  “Why would a perfect God need anything other than us?”

“Ah.”  Yes, that’s all I said.  Seventeen, remember?  Now what I thought was a little different.  What incredible arrogance!  ‘Why would a perfect God need anything other than us?’  Why would a perfect God settle for us?  Look around this planet we’re trying to ruin and then think about how bloody big your perfect God, or not, made the universe.  Argh!

Missing my reaction entirely, he then recapped a couple of articles he’d read recently and talked about how Christian Scientists are finding different explanations than those put forth by mainstream science for phenomenon like redshifting of distant galaxies that actually support the idea of a stable, non-expanding universe.  I.e., the universe is still just exactly how God made it 6,000 or so years ago.

Right.  Until that moment, I’d no idea how far gone he was.  Any scientist who happens to be Christian and feels the need to call him or herself a Christian Scientist is unlikely to be doing anything remotely like science.  S/he is pulling theories out of his/her ass to make the facts fit a particular world view.  Science, on the other hand, is about figuring out how things actually work and adjusting your worldview to fit the data.

“Ah,” I said again.  In the interest of friendship, I let it go with an eye roll or two and changed the subject.

A news article from yesterday’s Windsor Star seems to bring the Catholic Church marginally into line with the rest of the world in a very unexpected way, at least to me.  Apparently the vatican’s chief astronomer and scientific advisor to the Pope doesn’t see the conflict between believing in God and the existence of life elsewhere in the universe.  After all, creation is a pretty staggeringly huge place.  The Big Bang is okay and the universe being billions of years old doesn’t mean that God didn’t create it.

Wow, backup from a really surprising place.  Maybe there’s hope after all.

Apparently the battle scene is going to go on a little longer than I originally thought.  Afterwards, some clean up and a coronation.

Just a quick update on novel progress today.

Psychologically very satisfying to crack this particular barrier.  Not quite ready to jump for joy yet.  I’ll save that for after I’ve written the last word of the last chapter.

Okay, so I managed not to post during my entire vacation and in the week since.  Fourteen days exactly since my last post and, due to family commitments, this one is going to be short, just a quick novel update.

Yes, it just keeps getting longer.  I actually took five days off of writing completely (and barely turned on the computer at all) during my vacation, the first such days since last September, or I’d be even closer to the end (which I’m currently projecting at 105-107k).  I’m down to a short battle scene and two chapters before I reach ‘The End’.  Feeling good.

I suppose I should also:

I’ve started transcribing what I’ve written long hand but I’m not caught up yet and still handwriting 100-150 words per day on this story.  Hope to synch things up just about the same time I finish Dragon Summer but I may continue the hand written bit for a while so I can get some editing done on some shorter work and get those stories out circulating.  I’m starting to be really curious if anyone thinks I might be publishable in some form.

More tomorrow or the next day.  I’ve got a backlog of a few things to rant about.