When It's Good, It's Good

Despite how trite these words of wisdom are, it is what it is. I could do this forever, but what I'm getting at is that reaching a goal isn't always cause to celebrate. Or at least not for long.

After reaching 50K for NaNoWriMo on the 15th, my story was just on fire. There was no way I was putting it down to go back and edit, not when my current drafting efforts are falling together in ways I hadn't planned. 

The first time I ever heard that people don't find sequels as good as the first one directed at books, I was stunned. Sure, with movies, I get it. There's a whole team of people dumping ridiculous amount of money into a product they hope will start a full-blown franchise. For most writers, we learn that it can take a lot of damp matches to even light a candle let alone hope to set the world's imagination ablaze.

I've said before that I always feel like my first book of a series is weakest in retrospect. I know it's not the best business practice to make it seem lackluster when it's supposed to be the flagship that keeps up the journey. UnNamed excited me. Yet UnSung thrilled me. Working on UnHeard absolutely enthralls me. In a way, I feel like I may want to consider writing the first three books of any series before releasing anything. Why? Because I see a pattern of only feeling completely confident about the world I begin once I've established three books. My first series struck the same chord; in each trilogy, the third book always felt like the strongest.

UnNamed is almost too quick a read despite being nearly 90K. UnSung's massive word count really helped me pace the characters and discoveries and I'm finding the same colorful spread even more fully realized in UnHeard. I won't rewrite UnNamed unless there's some overwhelming call for it, but I feel like I might have thrown in another huge growth and wealth of story if I were going back to redraft it.

Of course, I'm playing with the idea of some short stories. A few branching from UnNamed's history, at least one brewing from UnSung. The UnSung one actually wedges in between UnSung and UnHeard but not in the series format that would make it fit. It would detail an event that will be vaguely mentioned sometimes but completely unnecessary to the main plot. I'm rather a stickler for not developing anything that doesn't link directly to the main plot so it's definitely a spin-off.

All the same, as a writer, I'm embracing the idea that plans are suggestions. I didn't expect to want to keep writing UnHeard. It was supposed to help build confidence in the continuing story but it became an entity all its own.

If I can offer any advice, it's this-- don't squander those hard pulls. Some writers might take that too narrowly. I do see quite a few that post those memes about starting five new stories on impulse but that's not as widely relatable as the Internet would have you believe. I'm never short on ideas, but I don't find those pulls affect me in the way I mean this. Those instant impulses are more along the lines of a hard tug, whiplash away from the scary finish. It's not that I don't have them, it's just that I don't place value on them when what I really want is the long pull.

It's not exactly beginner's advice because, like your first childhood crushes, all of the pulls/tugs feel important. It took years of introspection to understand the weight of impulses, to learn which ideas to flirt with and which to court. The 'years' part is subjective, having little to do with wisdom, age, experience or maturity. You just stop relating to the ones who complain they don't have enough ideas or have too many once you know it. You always have the right amount of ideas and adapt to how they present themselves.

I write almost obsessively despite this cold kicking my ass still because this is a pull and it makes me truly excited to follow it for days on end. If it had been an impulse, some false lead, it would have faded in a couple hours.

Don't mistake this as some statement for the superiority of epic-length novels. Anything that keeps you excited to keep going past a couple hours qualifies in this example. Pulls need time. You can get bursts from poetry or flash fiction but until you're pouring those into compilations, it's just not the same (coming from someone who was a burst writer). Again, if you're using the flirt/court analogy, then you're looking at the difference between a one night stand and a love affair. A text message and a shoebox full of love letters. Bursts are amazing and valuable but if you're lamenting that you'll never finish a novel as something that matters to you, then you're looking for the pull. Until you learn to swat the distractions, the chances of producing those larger goals are really slim.

Think about what else in your life could stand to improve by limiting those pesky impulses. Or just embrace the hot mess. 

For the hell of it, I'll just wrap it up by saying I'm at the 71K+ mark now. It's way over the goal, but why not see if I can make it to 100K?  Certainly seems doable at this rate.