Nanowrimo target achieved, and yet…
I smashed through the nominal Nanowrimo 50,000 word target on Saturday, with Stolen Skies, Part Twenty-One – one short novel completed! I’d been agonising about this for a couple of days, since I knew I wouldn’t have finished off the story I’ve been telling in 50k, and I wasn’t sure quite what I felt about that. On the one hand, absolutely hurray: I haven’t written like this for ages, and you know what kids, I can still bash out an unedited heap of words in rapid succession that, if you squint, definitely looks like a fun unpolished story. Many thanks to my four dedicated readers for making me feel like I’m a proper writer and everything. On the other hand: what’s the point in just ending a story when I haven’t reached the end…? Nightmare scenario basically.
I’ve been able to get up and write a few thousand words each day far more easily than I can get up to go and do exercise, so plainly this is really very good for something deep inside, the artist locked up in my bony garret is having a fine old time. I figured maybe I needed another ten or fifteen thousand words to round the tale off properly. And then the possibility of just starting a sequel winked at me lasciviously from the back of my mind. God damn it.
In the end, part twenty-one does wrap up the story, in that it brings us all the way (pretty much) from the future point that the story begins with (Evanith getting glassed in a pub), and then has a 50,000 word flashback to see what’s led him to that point. Which I can argue to myself is at least part one of a story complete. Spoilers, we finally meet the Vaunted by the end of 21, we see what’s going on with him in the present, but I was u5nable to resist putting a bit of a cliffhanger in.
And, as I knew it probably would, that cliffhanger was for me, not the reader, teasing and tempting me to get up reasonably early on a Sunday morning and write more tasty words. Which I duly did. Part Twenty-Two is really the start of the next phase of the story as I see it. This phase probably won’t turn out to be as long as the first section, but it’s got lots more aliens and hopefully will explain what happens both in between the Vaunted showing up and Evanith getting glassed, and I’d like to get into the ensuing war against (spoilers) afterwards. I’ll just have to see how I get on. Rather than portentously name the next bit a whole new book Dead Skies, for example, I’m just gonna keep going. Partly it’s because the prospect of starting with a blank page is appalling, whereas this Word doc now has 54,865 words in it, and that proves an enormous esteem and encouragement boost first thing in the morning. Still, worth knocking out a new bit of AI cover art for.
So, onwards into the coming tide of destruction. Enjoy! If you’ve been reading it, I’d love to hear (mostly positive, this is just for fun) feedback and what you’ve thought so far.
Stories are just fun to tell
I’ve been realising a lot during this writing month. It’s making me happy, and making my brain feel awake in a specific way it hasn’t for a while. I love improvised comedy, and that’s 100% storytelling and playing with friends. Occasionally I get to tell stories on my own, on stage. If you can tolerate such stupidity, you’re welcome to view my storytelling contribution to MissImp’s Monsters of Improv show from earlier this month at Malt Cross. It’s a science fiction story, I guess. Apologies to Frank Herbert, and the Catholic church I guess (but generally, fuck em, they owe us more than we could ever owe them).
