Next Saturday is an all hands on deck workday; the students land in force. The plan till then: write as much as possible whenever not at work. Beyond that point the odds of a normal workday are unlikely until October.

About thirty pages of serious lifting remain. From there, light edits and a complete ending rewrite.

A quirk — and it’s a good one — about the this stage of the edit process is that for every page cut, a new passage takes its place. Where it comes from, I’m never sure. Many times I’m unaware as the excise, revise, rewrite cycle plays out. I just whack the weakest scene, write a better version, and at the end of the session — somehow, magic maybe — the word count falls at roughly the same mark.

Had an interesting phone call with a friend in the Great White North about writing in general, and the art of story telling in great detail. Turns out our styles are similar enough that we admire the other’s work, and can probably write together, and in a way that meshes both of our strengths, without producing something that reads like a Round Robin free for all. And yes, I have mentioned this before on the site.

At the same time, we approach the craft, character development and dialog very differently. I imagine this writer takes lots of notes about characters, settings and back story before starting. My habit is to map high level plot points, and do a very brief scene outline, i.e. hero finds body in a bathroom, note in killer’s hand on mirror mentions hero by name. I might spend a lot of time on the ramp up process, taking ten thousand feet snapshots. Or not. In the end, though, I let the characters reveal themselves through their actions, revise the outline on the fly with respect to plot, and avoid a commitment to character specifics until they demand to be colored in.

But the bottom line is that a natural synergy between us very possibly awaits. If we let it.

The question: will a project happen. Possibly. I hope definitely. However, he’s marrying this fall, and starting on his novel. I have mine to finish and sell.

Basically I’m at a loss as to how to get to the next step, but open to suggestions. My instinct says whip up a rough synopsis and outline for a story idea we discussed, hand it off and see where it leads. Second idea: write the first scene, planning be damned. The freedom of that approach might be so different from our usual model, it will spark the initial interest and get the project off the ground.

Thoughts?

Tons of novel edits this weekend, no doubt a byproduct of the long, lazy summer reaching its end. Mornings are cooler, the air drier, and my patience, longer. Amen, my brothers and sisters. Fall knocks for thee.

On average, clearing about 15-20 pages a week. Some weeks net 15 brand new pages — like last weekend — while others involve heavy revisions of existing tracts. The watershed mark is page 250-260. Clear of that point, it’s about fine tuning existing material. But I am not there yet.

The last 2-5 pages will be completely rewritten, and it may take weeks to get that very last mile right. Which is reasonable, since beating the first 30 pages into submission made for one month of sheer madness. And the anniversary of that fest is two years ago this October. Enough writing already. Finish the book!

Since the students return on the 8th, I decided another three day weekend was in order. Jump time for more novel edits.

One thing I’ve always liked about writing is my influence over whether or not it happens. Of course, I have very little sway over what froths up to the screen, whether a passage works, or the aesthetics of my style. That — like stories — ultimately comes from someplace else. But the go/no go decision is mine, and that is worth a lot when the bombs of fate land at the doorstep.