Last night, I passed the 30,000 word mile marker in my manuscript. This is the now the longest story I've ever written, and I'm not even to my climax yet (but it's coming very shortly).
I'm actually a little nervous that I'm going to hit the end of the story well before the 70,000 word mark. My first inclination when I realized that was to go back and do a new outline, and try to figure out where I need to add.
Instead of looking back, I decided the best thing to do would be to press on, and see where the word count is when I hit ‘The End’. If I stop to reassess, I might get so sidetracked that I don’t finish the thing. Besides, the word count will change as I go through and edit it anyway. I want to focus on finishing the story. If I'm short, I can figure out where I need to add, and if I'm long, which I won’t be, I can figure out where to cut.
At this point in my writing journey, I believe its vital that I simply finish that which I have begun.
2 comments:
Finishing is good. You can always fix things later.
When I write I leave the editing for the second draft, and it if happens that the story is shorter than I'd hoped, then that's probably the length the story was meant to be and anything longer is just unnecessary padding.
I also know from my short story experiences that my second drafts tend to be longer than my first. So I'm hoping that will be case for my novel length story as well.
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