One of the biggest challenges I’ve had to overcome with this second novel I’m working on now has been maintaining the momentum I had with the first one, along with the three shorter stories I wrote earlier this year.
Writing between late December and January, I wrote the rough draft of “Killing the Immortals” in six weeks flat. It took me six months to get it ironed out to be ready for publication, but I banged out 85,000 relatively coherent words of that story in six weeks. That seems crazier the further I get away from it.
It’s now been about the same amount of time since I started my next as-yet-untitled novel, and I’m only about 20,000 words into it. Why such a different pace? The biggest thing that got in my way was baseball. Specifically, the Cubs and their wonderful, amazing, mind-blowing run to the World Series. As a confessed baseball and Cubs obsessive, there was no way I was going to miss even a little bit of their playoff games. And all the games were late. On weeknights, there was simply no time to write between work and the game.
And now, my momentum’s a little sapped. I’m doing my best to get myself upstairs to write, but it’s been more challenging this time after so many fits and starts. I’m also starting a new day job, which is taking up a lot of my attention and brain power — to whatever extent my brain has power, of course.
Prior to diving into fiction writing, I read Stephen King’s “On Writing,” and he talked about how he didn’t like to take more than about a night off a week — and typically wrote every single day — because stepping away from his stories made him feel like he lost a connection with the story and its characters. I wasn’t all that sure about that, as I never gave myself a chance to feel that with “Killing the Immortals” or the shorter pieces.
Now, though, I’m definitely starting to understand what he was saying. When I do get back to the story, it’s tougher to let it envelop me, to really feel like I’m living inside it. The characters aren’t quite as concrete as they were the first time. They’re just a little fuzzier, and I’m writing more slowly when I do get a chance to write because of that.
So, I’m definitely getting the importance of momentum much more now. I’m more jealous of those who are able to focus all their energy on this. I know that, if this were my actual job, I’d be writing 2,000+ words basically every day. As it is, though, I’m going to have to keep making it work with the time and life I actually have, not the time and life that I’d like to have one day in the distant dreamy future. Hopefully soon, I can regain that momentum. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep driving through this story. It will get done. I’m just not quite sure when.
Leave a Reply