The Long Run

Last night I was listening to that classic Eagles album while tweaking my outline for the second act of Maestra. It seemed incredibly appropriate. This book is twice as long as my last and it feels like the second draft has stretched on for a long time now. Most writers would view being nearly 70,000 words into a draft as nearing the home stretch. I may be halfway through this draft. The more I write in it the more convinced I am that the word count at the end of this draft will be in the neighborhood of 135,000 to 145,000 words. 

Between drafts I began re-writing my outline for the second act. There were a lot of things that worked well but there were also a lot of empty space and things that seemed to fall flat. So, even as I am now 20,000 words into part two of the second draft , I am still redoing the outline for it every few days. It's not a mess, but it is certainly a form of controlled chaos. 

When I began this project I knew from the outline that it was going to be much broader in scope than The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett, but I felt it was a tale that could be contained in 100,000 to 110,000 words. As the first draft progressed I quickly realized that these characters really needed room to spread their wings and come to life. I even pondered breaking the entire story down into three separate novels but I have to be honest -- that feels ridiculously pretentious for someone who is working on their second novel. 

So, here I am, listening to the Eagles in the twilight of their original run sounding tired and worn out from the journey. My characters are certainly at the point in their story where events have taken a toll on all of them, and the writer of their tale is feeling pretty weary, as well. I'm looking forward to finishing this draft (hopefully by the end of July) and taking a break before editing. 

They say that good art comes from negativity and boy is there enough of that in the world right now. It would be nice to think that any part of the bleakness in the world can be used for something positive right now.