I’m teetering on the edge right now of running away with the rest of this book. In a good way! Not a bad way. I can see the home stretch. It’d take me just over two weeks at 10 pages a day to finish the thing. I mean…that would be me sitting in bed just a WEEK from now, looking down the barrel of being done with it in just a week. The final act.
It’s a good book. It’s straightforward, sure, but I’m falling in love with my characters, and there’s some really fun stuff with the world. That, coupled with the fact that this story has been told over and over because it DELIVERS…I think there’s a good chance readers will love it.
Story structure is the shit, man. It’s eye-opening. I am putting this poor crew through some SHIT…but damn if it doesn’t make everything pay off in the end soooooo nicely. They’ve earned the title of heroes by the end. Save the day. By the skin of their teeth, but they save it. That’s just so fucking SATISFYING. It’s satisfying to write. Fair chance it’ll be satisfying to read.
I’ve never written a story with this much knowledge of story structure at my back, blowing wind into my sails. I’m not exactly sure if I’m leveling up—I did this innately with Starstuff, as it turns out—but I’m definitely getting myself unstuck. I was stuck for so long. I’m not stuck any more. I’m moving again. So…I doubt this particular book will represent a significant step forward in my craft, but it is undoubtedly a significant step forward just for me as a writer. A writer writes, and I have been not-writing for a long, long time.
Or, maybe it’s not so long. Perhaps, in the infinity of the multi-verse, this is the shortest time it’s ever taken me to work through this fear of success and failure that I have to deal with. The “long” and the “short” don’t matter, in the end. All that matters is where I am right now…and I am unstuck right now.
Praise be.