This Is the End (of My Writing Journal)

In my earliest stories, 20 years ago, everything started with a punchline. Then the story rolled like cotton candy around it. Now I officially pronounce myself reached the next level, because my novel "Book Warms", in its first draft ends with a punchline that came entirely unplanned.

I was reminded about Kurt Vonnegut these days and his wise words about the feeling of coming home once you have passed the middle of your story. It confused me at the time it came. Being in the 70ies of the thousands of words, way further than the established length of my prose, I should have in any way passed the middle, but the nice feeling was not there at all.

Now I know why it was missing.

I have been coming home on a route I never knew existed.

Which explains the feverish expectation that tortured me instead of the peaceful feeling of skipping joyfully on the right track.

How do I feel before going into the creative process of editting?

I come with a lot of inertia of the better writer than I am now, compared to when I started the story. And with hope that me form then and now will establish rapport and help each other out.

I have a feeling that there are too many things happening in this novel. Compared to the previous where nothing happened, I feel rather overwhelmed. There are things happening because 30 years ago someone said something. And I am trying to make it sound sane. There are people doing things for fun, but nobody finds it funny. And a lot of social media inhabitancy, to which I am as foreign as Joules Verne was to the 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea (exaggerating faintly).

I feel like a conductor of a large orchestra, where my 44 chapters are the individual instrumentalists, from which I not only want to be in time but to radiate feelings, mood and colours in the right rhythm.

Now, before I sway my baton over the text and find its best sounds, is time for my favourite folly activity: to justify by 'word find' that the draft is what it was planned to be.

It was supposed to be a story about Elena (490 times that will indisputably go down) and about Christopher (471, which is a very good score, bearing in mind that (for my utter entertainment) it appeared as"Chistopher" quite a few times). It was planned as a story about love (143), books (406) and publishing (49).

Let's check the text for popular parasites as well:

actually - 35

well - 93

very - 246 (I have a vanity excuse :)

really - 45

something - 80

And at the very end of this hunt some of my favourites:

common sense - 16

procrastination - 3

triumphant - 3

table - 79 (must be because of the abundant use of 'comfortable')

abundant - 11

comfortable - 15

Should you be curious how was the whole journey hereto, find below the previous parts of my writing journal:

Part 4 https://erasilvertongue.wixsite.com/veraangelova/post/writing-rules-my-writing-journal-part-4

Part 3 https://erasilvertongue.wixsite.com/veraangelova/post/the-word-up-my-writing-journal-part-3

Part 2 https://erasilvertongue.wixsite.com/veraangelova/post/my-writing-journal-continued

Part 1 https://erasilvertongue.wixsite.com/veraangelova/post/take-it-to-another-level