So am I back on track now? Time will tell.
Saturday, I sat down and wrote 2120 words. That’s the most I’d written on Keeper of His Soul in a really long time. This book has been the bane of my existence lately. Not because I don’t love the story; I really do. But for some reason, I’ve been afraid of it. I’ve been experiencing really bad “page fright”.
Here’s what I think is going on. I wanted this book to be a novel since it’s a sequel to Soul of a Vampire, which IS a novel. So then when the story moves a little too fast, I panic because it won’t be long enough. But what I need to do is let each story be what it will be. Some are meant to be novels, some are meant to be shorter. When I first talked to Susan Bischoff about this story, she even said she thought it would make a better novella than a novel. But I wanted it to be longer. When I try to force a story to be longer, though, I end up with words I don’t really need. I tend to write lean. I write short and to the point. I like things to move fast. That’s the way I like to read, too. So that’s why I do better with novellas most of the time.
Right now, this book is at about 35,000 words. It’s getting close to the last scene of the story. So it’s going to be a long novella or a very short novel. (There’s a lot of controversy about what’s considered a novel. I say 50,000 words. I’ve been to conferences where they say 40,000.) At this point, I’m going to stop worrying about it. I just need it to be long enough to warrant making a paperback. At about 35,000 is where I kind of draw that line. I know some people will do shorter paperbacks. I’ll just see how it goes. At least I worked on it a lot Saturday and again at lunch today. I’m kind of back on the horse.
I hope all of you are doing well and are enjoying this holiday season. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s is like one big fun time for me. Maybe it’s all the Christmas movies. And the food. Yeah, the food. 🙂
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