JUNE 2020 – Resiliency, important in life, important in writing. Been cranking with the writing once again this month as the word count is really starting to add up. Was comparing it to other works of fiction to get a sense for how it weighed against other books, as I’m curious how many edited pages it will be. As I haven’t formatted any of the text yet with any page layout or font specs yet. But it is looking to be a similar length as say a ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ aka ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ (of which I like the Philosopher’s Stone title better, I wonder why they changed it for the American/Global audience?).
Defining moments for the characters are happening and I am going off script a bit as I think up other (typically more plausible) solutions for how the characters would act/react to events, now that I know them better. So I branched out a section of the story the other day, in that I backtracked in the story about a chapter and moved the story in a different direction. Keeping the original file saved separately in case I decided to go back to that fork in the plot (thus far I haven’t opted to go back). As I had arks in mind for certain characters, but then you get writing and realize that it wasn’t ‘them’ and that they would handle things differently and that I needed to change the story accordingly.
Making everything fit, all the characters, all the key plot elements, and then have it feel realistic and fresh is a challenge, but incredibly essential. As if something doesn’t fit, no matter how cool an idea, you are probably better off removing it from your story. As hard as that may be to do. Is yet another reason it is important to have a great editor to be able to go through your work and give you feedback and help you when you are unable to make difficult decisions regarding your work. As not every idea necessarily should be crammed into the story and can be sidelined for a future project. I’ve been listening to more interviews with established writers, such as Patrick Rothfuss and it has been interesting to hear how many of them employ beta readers to give them feedback. I am always so secretive with my work, maybe that is not entirely helpful, and I should be getting some feedback from a writing community. Will ponder it for this release! As I also want to be honing my process and getting more professional with each subsequent project.
Picked up the book ‘The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story’ by Michael M. Lewis, who has written some famous and brilliant works such as ‘Money Ball’, ‘The Big Short’, and ‘The Blind Side’ all of which you might recognize and were turned into Hollywood films. ‘The New New Thing’ is about entrepreneurial culture during the dot com era in Silicon Valley, which I find very fascinating. As startups are such unique creatures and the tech space is fascinating in bringing disruptive technology to the marketplace, often due in no small part to the enigmatic visionary figures behind them.
That’s the latest. Work continues, hope to have more good news for you next month! Cheers everyone!
~ CS
