This past week I’ve spent going over the rough draft of All That Death, the sequel to After the Service. I originally finished the draft back in June, but I’ve discovered that I really need to put a draft aside for a while, in order to get proper perspective on it.
That said, I hope I do have proper perspective on this one, because I really enjoyed it. It looks to me like All That Death is a better book than the just drafted Degrees of Murder, and that it will require less revision. We’ll see–I’ll be workshopping the book with various friends & associates over the next month. The plan is to have most of the revisions done by the end of the month, and then to have it published & available for purchase sometime this spring.
I’m going to post the first scene below the fold–an innocent seeming scene, with a mere hint of danger lurking beneath the surface. Keep in mind that this is still a draft, so nothing here is necessarily as good as it should be. Also, there are some spoilers for After the Service–nothing that would give too much away, but it wouldn’t hurt to go purchase that book before you read the excerpt! »» The Rewrite Begins
Monday, December 8th, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: Revisions| All That Death, excerpt|
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Whether your shopping list includes children, teens or adults, whether fantasy fans or mystery buffs, whether those looking for a hefty hardback tome or someone just wanting some light reading on the weekends, Goddard Publishing has you covered. But Christmas is coming soon–the books take about a week to ship, so order now!
After the Service is the the story of David Kelter, an unassuming college student who stumbles across a freshly dead corpse in his church, and finds himself on the trail of a killer–a trail that leads right down the middle of Grace Baptist Church! Also available in hardback.
Edelsha: Tale of the Third Ring is the tale of Geoff, a boy of sixteen (also unassuming, as it happens), who is transported to a fantastic land of gryphons, dryads, magic, and a deadly evil that he alone can stand against. Also available in paperback.
Monday, December 1st, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: Current Offerings| Christmas gifts, Shameless plug|
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NaNoWriMo ends today, but I finished my own draft yesterday afternoon, with time to spare. The total draft clocked in at 77,722 as counted by the NaNoWriMo word goblins, but Microsoft Word counts it as 78,707*. That’s about 10,000 more words than the original draft for After the Service, a NaNoWriMo product from 2006. My estimate for this book was 80K, so I’m fairly pleased with where it ended up. There’s lots of room for cutting if need be, once I rewrite it–and heaven knows it needs plenty of rewriting. This draft is puts the “rough” in “rough draft.” But hey, that’s what NaNoWriMo is for.
And now, I get to forget it entirely. December is devoted to rewriting David Kelter’s previous mystery, All That Death–I’ll be blogging bits and pieces of that process, as well. I will come back to this draft once that whole process is entirely finished, and AtD is published, hopefully sometime this spring.
“This draft,” by the way, has a new name–I’ve ditched The Murder School, and am currently calling it Degrees of Murder. Get it? Because, you see, he graduates.
Sunday, November 30th, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| Degrees of Murder, NaNoWriMo, The Murder School|
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I’ve noticed a pattern in my writing output this month. The first 25,000 words, about a third of the book, came very quickly. It took about 8 days, over which I averaged 3,320 words. I wrote more than 1,000 words every day, and more than 2,000 all but one. The writing was coming easily–I knew what I wanted to happen, and how. Writing was generally fun, and so distractions were not much of an issue.
But once I hit 25,000, things got more difficult. The next 25,000 took 12 days to write, and I averaged 1,987 per day. Things were incredibly inconsistent–the median was 821 words, and days ranged from zero to 6,144. Things were not coming easy, and writing was hard work, meaning I was easily distracted.
Then, this weekend, I started in on my last 25,000, and I have hopes that we’ll see a blending of the two. The work has not gotten particularly easier, but I may have found a strategy that enables me to get get significant amounts of writing done anyway–specifically, an expectation that I will write 1,000 words each hour. Once I have finished those 1,000 words, whether it takes me the entire hour or only 30 minutes, I can indulge myself in one distraction or another. It worked very well yesterday, when I cranked out 5,395 words.
It seems like a silly thing, but I think this just might be the strategy that gets the book finished before December.
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| NaNoWriMo, writing tips|
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After a miserable week of writing, yesterday was a Brazilian holiday, and I took the opportunity to crack 50K, two-thirds of the way into the month. This implies that I’m now behind my pace for 80,000, but that might be okay, because I’m no longer sure the book will even get that long. I would like it to–mainly because I want room to trim things down without making it too short. I will be content if it is just 75,000, but we’ll see where the plot takes me.
Friday, November 21st, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| NaNoWriMo|
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After fifteen days of writing, I’m 84% of the way to the goal of 50,000. But as gratifying as that is, 50K has never been my real goal here–my goal is to write a novel. As mentioned before, my previous David Kelter books have been about 70K and 75K respectively (though the latter is only a draft). I have been expecting this to be a bit longer, and so far it looks like that will be the case. My general estimate has been 80K.
That means that not only am I halfway through the month, but I’m probably also halfway through the novel itself, which is pretty good timing. And not only that, but I’m just about exactly halfway through those handwritten notes, too.
The best news of all, though, is that I think I’m over the wall I hit this past week. After four straight days of sub-1000 writing, I cranked out 4,736 yesterday.
(NOTE: Somehow, this post got lost somewhere in the ether last weekend. I think there was more to it when I first wrote it, but here’s what seems to have survived.
Friday, November 21st, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| David Kelter, NaNoWriMo, The Murder School|
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After a great Sunday (6,144 words), I’ve hit something of a wall this week–not breaking 2,000 since then, and not breaking 1,000 for the last three days. The problem is that I’ve hit something of a dull moment.
Specifically, David’sd graduation. It’s not really all that dull–it’s a very short portion of the book, so readers will whiz right through it. I have to slog through each and every word. Also, it’s an important piece of scenery for the book, and the event the entire story is organized around (aside from the murder). So it’s not like I can or should just skip it. I’m just going to have to muscle it out, I think.
My other problem is that I’m coming to the end of my typed outline. I’ve typed up a bit more, but I’m not sure if I should spend time typing & neatening the entire rough outline, or if I should just type from the chicken scratch on the notebook paper from here on out. Decisions, decisions.
Friday, November 14th, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| NaNoWriMo, writer's block|
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Overall, a pretty good week–quantity-wise, anyway. I’ve faced down more than a few “THIS IS CRAP!” moments, but have managed to remind myself that everything is crap until at least the first rewrite.
I’m averaging 3,357.4 words per day, which would come out to about 100,722 words if I keep it up. I’m not planning on having The Murder School be quite that long. After the Service is about 69,000, and the first draft of All That Death is just under 75,000. I expect The Murder School to be longer than either, but not by 25,000 words. If you throw out my single highest & lowest days, I’m averaging right around 2,900 a day–I’d end up with about 91,000 words, which is still longer than I’d like, but acceptable for a first draft. I’m shooting for about 80-85,000 words for this one.
So, not only should I be able to finish my 50K without much problem, I should also actually be able to finish the entire draft before November 30.
Saturday, November 8th, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| David Kelter, NaNoWriMo, word count|
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Two pretty good days have put me 20% of the way to the NaNoWriMo goal. Now comes the hard part, when I have to juggle work with my writing, but that’s why I built up the cushion that I did this weekend.
Depending on how things go, I’d like to be well beyond 50K by the time November 30 rolls around. The last two David Kelter books have both been around 70-75K, and this one may well end up longer than that. But I have plans for next month–namely, revising the second David Kelter book, All That Death, to have it ready for publication in the Spring. So, if I could finish the entirety of The Murder School during November, that would be ideal.
But doing the writing has reminded me of something very important–writing is hard work. Sometimes it comes easily, and those are great days. But usually, it’s hard work. When you haven’t sat down and written 10K words in a weekend for a while, you sometimes forget that little fact.
Monday, November 3rd, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| NaNoWriMo, The Murder School|
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Whew! So far, I’m hitting all my goals, but only just.
Last night, I managed to scrape together outlines of my last few scenes. They aren’t great, but I’m expecting that, as I write, they will coalesce by the time I finish. Besides, I expect that by the time I get there, I’ll be well past 50K, and thus out from under the gun of November, so that I’ll be able to take my time.
However, I could not take my time today. I had set the goal for myself of hitting 7,500 words, without realizing how scanty the outlines for my first few scenes really were. My next few scenes are actually outlined fairly thoroughly, so it will be less work to put them together. Today, though, I took 17 handwritten lines of notes and turned them into 7,519 words. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
I also had to name some characters, which I put more effort into this time around than I have in the past. I’ll introduce those names in a later post. For the moment, I’ll leave you with the Lines Of The Day. I may not do this every day, but whenever I write something that strikes me as moderately worthwhile I’ll share it with you.
“Mr. Kelter, I realize this may be an unusual request, but hear me out. When Jenny first decided to come out here to visit Seattle Pacific, I did some research on the school. Part of that research was reading several editions of the Falcon, where I read some of articles about the unfortunate events of this past January—and your part in them. And I also read the article you wrote in regards to your investigation of the death that occurred in your church. If you don’t mind my saying so, those were both rather impressive accomplishments.”
David, as it happened, didn’t mind.
And with that, I’m going to bed. Tommorow, I’ll write something more sensible, like 1,667 words. Or so.
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008,
by Timothy Goddard,
Filed under: General Writing| NaNoWriMo, outlining, The Murder School|
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