Empire Moves, Slowly But Surely.

I have been driving my Facebook pals crazy with almost daily short updates on the progress I am making. So far, I am blowing my 5 pages a day goal out of the water. But, more importantly, I am happy with what I have. Things have changed a bit from the planning stages to what comes out on the paper, but the changes are all very good changes which will make the work more satisfying.

Sometimes, where you want a character to go and where the should go are two different things. Other times, the sky opens and the right way to resolve something hits you like lightening.

So far, I am at 53 pages, 18,789 words. The bigger page count is due to me changing the font from 11 to 12 (why does my version of Word love 11 font? Who uses that?). But, still, I have gotten a good bit written lately.

Things are slowing down a tad because I am going back to the beginning and doing some of the introductory work that requires research. I’m at a good pausing place on the end of the book, and I hope that spreading out the work on the research-required bits will keep me invested.

That, and the next scene I’m going to write on the end parts of the novel is a tough scene that will require me to get into a head-space I’m not quite ready for yet.

What is really hitting me as I make this journey is how much I enjoy the act of creative writing. Short stories always drove me crazy because my characters seemed to have more life than could be captured in ten or so pages. I always felt like I was giving my writing the short-shrift. Of course, the act of writing an impactful and self-contained short story is one that I now understand takes the work of a true master. It is much harder to write a complete short story than to write a novel, where you have a bigger canvas and more room to work with tension, complication, and resolution.

I know now more than ever before that my writing is better suited for longer works. I might try to write a novella next, but I know that that will take just as much work as this; it will just be a shorter story.