Inspired Ending

Posted on Posted in Masters of the Sun, Novels, Writing Progress

No, I haven’t finished Masters yet.

In fact, at about 37,200 words, I’ve only made about 2,000 words of progress in the last week. Not so good. But, I think I should be able to get at least 2,000 words tonight so that’ll help a bit.

Why such bad progress after doing so well last Friday and Saturday? A lot of reasons. Mostly I got distracted by life. In general, I think my evening plan is pretty poor. My wife has a business she started a couple years ago. She sews stuff for new moms and babies: bibs, burp cloths, cushions, that sort of thing. Many nights, after the kids are asleep, she goes off and sews. I ostensibly use that time to write. Of course, a lot of the time I don’t turn off the boob tube, so I get totally distracted. Then around 10 pm she gets tired and goes up to bed. In general I go with her, and write after she falls asleep. But a lot of the time I don’t really write much at all. These things don’t really equate to good writing time.

I need to do better at prioritizing my evening time to include writing, so I can make acceptable progress on my stories. That means turning the TV off once the kids are asleep. And maybe not going to bed when my wife is ready to, however I might like to.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

😛

Or something like that.

So what’s with the “Inspired Ending” title to this post, you ask?  Well, I’ve known for a while how the story for Masters goes….up to a point.  But after that point, I have only vague notions about what should happen.  Where the hell to go with the story after the 15 to 20 thousand words that will be required to do what I know needs to happen so far has been weighing on me a bit.  But yesterday, or maybe it was Thursday, I had a revelation.  Dean Wesley Smith’s recent post about novel length in the new world of ebooks got me thinking.  I really don’t HAVE to spend the 150,000 or 200,000 words necessary to complete the entire tale right now.  Maybe it’d be best to stop where what I know has to happen ends (that’s actually a good stopping point, as it happens), at around the 50 to 60 thousand word mark.  Then I can move on to another project I’ve been thinking about.  In a few months, when my brain is fresh again, I can come back to the Masters story for part two.

This of course means I’ll be making Masters into a book series.  This is not what I initially envisioned.  But I find myself liking the notion of completing this portion of the story and moving on.  So I think that’s how it’s going to go.

Now that I’ve made that decision, suddenly it’s like a weight has been lifted, and I’m psyched to work full throttle on Masters again.  Taking the pressure off myself to get every detail of the story finished immediately helped a lot.

So that’s the new plan.  Finish part one of the Masters series and get it out for sale by the end of April.  After that, move on to the next project, for completion over the summer.  Part two of Masters will be my NaNoWriMo project.

Who knows, maybe enough people will like Masters that there will be a big demand for number two.

Of course, stopping midway may just piss people off and turn them away from my work forever.  But I doubt it.  Were that the case, trilogies and longer series would never have worked for other writers.  And we all know they do quite well.  So I feel good about this new direction.

Ok, off to write my story some more.