When a Story Goes Astray

Okay, I’ll admit it. I goofed. I started writing what I thought would be a sweet Christmas novella for the 2017 Christmas boxed set by the Authors of Main Street. Except my simple story has grown in length. The guidelines we follow are pretty relaxed and simple for these boxed sets. All new, great stories of novella length, 18K-40K words (I promise no one counts words), holiday themed (often an underlying theme), and no cliffhangers.

Here’s the dilemma. A romance usually ends in certain places such as the commitment for a lasting relationship such as an engagement ring or a wedding ring. So what have I done? He’s given her the engagement ring, actually without too much fanfare. The hardest part was getting to the point of asking. 😉  But I’m about to tip over the max word count.  I really need another 20k-30k words to finish this story. If I wrap it up for Christmas, I’m missing a big chunk of the story!

• So do I rip part of the story away? No, because I’m not going to take the life out of this story.
• Do I quickly tie up the story and put a bow on it? I hate reading stories where I’m so into the characters that when a writer does that I want to scream no and never read that author again.
• Do I just tip over the word count and warn my fellow authors out here on Main Street? Oops! I think I just told them. (It’s not nice to hog the space in the boxed set.)
• Or do I write this one until I feel it’s finished, and then write another for the boxed set? Time! I need more time!!

And there’s one more problem, I already know this is not going to end on that wonderful wedding. If I ended it there, I think my readers would be furious with me. Why? Because in the real world, it wouldn’t make sense. I can’t change the timeline of certain events. Darnit! The readers would be left hanging. Not a cliffhanger, but leaving them with the feeling that they were shortchanged, because they are left with all those life questions.

So I’m sitting here making the only decision that makes any sense. It’s extremely basic.  Write the story until it ends. Write the whole story, otherwise it won’t be a great story. So I’m about to go way over word count and that means I’ll have to write another story for the boxed set. I can do that.

This story tips the scale into literary fiction more than romance, even though there’s a romance tangled into it. This is a journey of two people who had found each other and have fallen madly in love. But the journey is not easy. Getting to their HEA (happily ever after) isn’t going to be solved with a wedding. It’s too complicated.

Real life is a walk through a maze filled with roses. There are plenty of thorns on those canes. The most beautiful roses often have no scent, the lowliest ones can be the sweetest, and some of the hardiest ones can be vicious with thorns. But if you take the time during the journey, you will discover the finch’s nest, the green tree frog hiding in the petals, the dizzying hum of the bees, the lady bug, and countless other creatures along the way. But there will always be those thorns, waiting to grab at your legs or shirt sleeve.  So I willingly took the path with an ending in mind, but somehow I plucked a rose and found myself tangled in thorns. Yet the air is sweet, and filled with song.

I can explain story arcs to a room filled with wannabe writers. I can teach them to write a beginning, a middle, and an end. But I can’t tell them how to stay within a word count because every story will demand a certain number of words. If I ended this one with a Christmas wedding, then my readers would be furious because there’s an arc that must be completed.

So I have strayed down a path. I’m not sorry for what I’ve done. In fact, I’m thrilled with this story.  It’s just not going to be a novella. There’s a great big story in this manuscript, and it needs to be told.

Guess I’ll have to write another story for our Christmas boxed set.

I Wrote Ten Thousand Words Today!

Umm…no. I didn’t. Lots of times on Facebook and Twitter, I’ll see posts from authors who crow about how many words they wrote that day. And I’m happy for them. Really. I’m just not one of them. I never will be. Know why? Because my writing routine is very different.

I know writers get tons of advice about just putting dreck on the page and then going back to edit later. If that works for you, and you’re happy to finish a first draft with 200,000 words of dreck that will eventually be cleaned and polished to a 50,000 word manuscript, good for you. Everyone has to find their own process.

Personally, I can’t put dreck on a page and boast about it. I can’t move forward until what I’ve written previously is the best that I can make it. I’ve been known to stall on a chapter for days because one word or sentence is wrong, and I can’t continue the story until I figure out what word or phrase needs to be replaced.

But wait! There’s more. I don’t plot or outline first, either. (Egads. Hide the women and children!) I don’t want to know how my characters are going to get out of that quicksand until I need to pull them out. If I know the answers to all my questions too soon, I get bored, rush to finish the story, and wind up with an unsatisfactory ending. I can’t help it. I can’t keep a secret. Not from my family when it comes to their Christmas gifts, not from my readers when it comes to the Happily-Ever-Afters.

I don’t apologize for not writing 10,000 words in a day because that’s not my process. Here’s a typical writing stint for me:

I write a scene, mostly dialogue. Then I go in and layer that scene. I fix punctuation and spelling errors, double-check my research, add color and scenery and stage direction. Then I do it again, tweaking word choices, tightening my tendency to be too verbose, adding the pertinent info I’ve overlooked. And then, when I think that scene could go into a published work exactly as written, I’m ready to move onto the next scene and do it all over again. 

With a process like this, it’s no wonder I’m thrilled if I write 500 words in a day. The difference between me and the Dreck Writer who writes 10,000 words a day is, when I type The End, it really is The End. I can rest assured that the book needs one quick read-through to focus on story arc and continuity, and that baby is ready to fly. While my counterpart is stuck in revision hell, trying to decide if (s)he really needs to mention the curtains were green right before the house goes up in flames or if (s)he should cut the whole scene because (s)he’s gotta kill a few darlings to meet that word count.

I refuse to feel inadequate because someone’s boasting about writing 10,000 words today, when I’ve stared at the same sentence for a week trying to decide whether to use “cerulean” or “blue.” It’s part of who I am as a writer. And who I am as a writer likes writing the perfect words while having no idea where my characters are going whenever I sit down at that keyboard. Even if I never get to boast that I wrote ten thousand words in one day.