It was a surreal experience seeing the number when I checked my word count on the manuscript yesterday. I knew I’d been writing more than I normally had before, but I guess I wasn’t really aware how much it actually was. I managed to get through more than ten thousand words in a week while still doing my day labour construction gig, which is kind of a big deal.
The first part of my process, having never done anything like this before, was to create an outline for the story in a dollar store sourced notebook. That took me about a full year, each chapter of the full twenty seven or so taking up about a page and a half written in my trademarked chicken scratch. I also decided to dedicate a section of that notebook to a kind of encyclopedia of the universe so that I didn’t get words or descriptions wrong the second and third times I referenced them as the story grew. It’s turned into quite the tome.
The second, and current part of the process is writing the first draft, and for the longest time it’s been crawling along as I try to put in time on the weekends and evenings, both of which are preciously light on free space. Normally, I’ll come home after a day of slogging through wet snow removal or site cleanup on some god-forsaken mud pit and it will be all I can do to muster a few lines, if that. But something seemed to happen when I passed that magical seventy thousand word mark, and for the last week I’ve been at it almost non stop. The characters are coming to life more, I feel more invested, and more than that, I feel like this is actually real now. I’m writing a novel, and I’m creating a universe. Unreal, man.
