Just finished chapter 20. It's no small chapter, but it's read is
smooth. It takes place over four days, and documents each day with an
appropriate length. Although it's long, chapter 20 is written in a way
where the reader won't feel bogged down. I made a decision that a moment
written for chapter 20 would best serve another part of the story,
happening three chapters from now. So, I cut and pasted the text into a
separate Word doc, and it's now tucked away for later use. The scene is
only three pages long, and was supposed to run into another before I
decided to have both scenes take place later in the book.
There was also a bit of a lesson in humility with chapter 20 of Book II of Fable Avenue. When
it came to the final pages of chapter 20, I decided to borrow from a
sequence I had written for an unfinished manuscript that's 15 years old.
The manuscript only has about 60 pages (and some change) written for
it. But the scene wasn't going to be a simple copy and paste, and to be
honest, I used the direction of the scene, not the entire scene itself.
Anyway,
I started reading this old work and I realized how far I'd come in
writing. Yeah, it's arrogant, but I gotta give a small pat on my back. Good God, did what I read really suck. It was okay, but it suffered from the
amateur, juvenile mistakes that plague aspiring writers (and some established ones, I gotta say. And I ain't talkin' about YA writers.). There was a
good amount of narrative, but there was a lot of expository narrative.
The dialogue was often cringe-worthy, but there was little expository
writing. Too many characters trying to be 'cool' with quirky one-liners.
It was heavier than an after school or Saturday morning cartoon, but the
juvenile writing was present none-the-less.
In my
defense, it was at a time when I was writing to write. I had ideas, and
it was about putting them down. Quick. I did know the writing wasn't
tight, but, fifteen years later, I'm surprised at how far I've come (and
still learning). Even in my final work, there's stuff I go back and
read and say, "Okay, we can avoid that for the next project."
But I'm grateful for the guerilla writing I did all those years ago. Now I can pull from them, as well as writings I did far before that.
So,
what do we got now? We got the next chapters of this current project.
Chapter 21 is short and fun, a nice break from a storm of thick, heavy
weight chapters to come before Act II of this piece concludes. I've
already begun outlining what needs to happen in Act III, and it looks
like it won't be as long as I've feared. I'm sitting at 334 pgs so far,
and hoping, at best, that 220 is all that's left. Again, at the most.
Other
activities going on at the moment are a design for the book cover, and
there's some scripting for videos for the book. TwinGriffinBooks.com
will also get a makeover, and the ball on this is already rolling.
Most
likely, the end of December will see the beginning of the third act. I
hope to finish the book around late May or early June, which gives a
good amount of time for editing. A first round of edits will begin in
January and run parallel with wrapping up the book's writing. As things come along, there will be some teaser videos for the new book, a title reveal (when it can be more than just Fable Avenue Book II), and book cover reveal.
Writing this series continues to be an amazing experience. 2014 will be big.
b write black
