I kicked my own butt in gear and go it done, baby! 6,000 words this month!
Phew. Now that I got that out of the way, I am genuinely very excited. The story is 59,000 words total so far. I did finish chapter 11 this month, and it’s currently sitting at roughly 6,300 words making it the second longest chapter of the book. I even trimmed some of what was supposed to go into it and shunted it off to chapter 12 because the break point of the chapter just fit nicely where it was. Plus, like I mentioned in last month’s post, I was able to write a certain scene/moment that I’ve been dying to since very early on in planning this story. It’s real creepy and gross and I love it.
So. Chapter 11. This ended up being longer than I expected it to be initially. It’s relatively straight forward plot-wise, though it does start off with the cliffhanger from chapter 10’s ending and ends with a bang itself. However, in between the start and finish I ended up taking time to explore more of the relationship between Di (main character) and Gene (righthand man). It was fun and nice to have a good excuse to explore more of the backstory and flesh out their characters. I kind of had that backstory already in mind and in my notes, but it just felt like a good place to fit it in the actual story.
My favorite thing when reading (and writing, to be honest) is to make people feel things. When you firmly establish a character and make someone believe they’re real, it can form an actual attachment (which can be both incredible and devastating, depending on the story). It’s one aspect of why I love reading, and my hope is to be able to do that myself with my own stories. Hopefully this moment that I somewhat spontaneously decided to add fuels that, but we’ll have to see.
I did also start chapter 12 as well. I only got a few pages in, but the ending of chapter 11 demanded that I keep going. You’ll understand when you read it. If you read it. You get it. However, chapter 12 has some intense moments coming up as well. Not necessarily action-wise, but we are steadily ramping up to the end. Including chapter 12, there are only six more chapters left with plenty of crazy twists, reveals, and action-packed moments to come.
I’m very excited to see this wrap up, hopefully in the next few months. If I can average a chapter a month, I can get it done just in time for October and spooky season for my own draft 1 readthrough. I tend to refrain from going back too far and reading while I’m writing, because I also tend to start editing and revising while I read. If I do that, it will become an endless cycle and I’ll never get the book done. I did, however, start printing out the chapters I’ve already finished to put in a binder so I can physically see the progress. It makes it a little more visual and gets me excited to see the thickness grow.
Here’s to progress!