This week, I finished the first draft of Let No Man Put Asunder.
Like so many things in the writing life it wasn’t a sudden burst of inspiration or anything like that. When I sat down at my laptop Wednesday it struck me that even though Paul and Mandy are in the “fight back” phase of their battle with the Community of All, I was still just dropping them into peril after peril with no narrative spine. Not quite this messy—
— but pretty close.
I realized that at 75,000 words I was novel length, and that it had reached the point in the story where I could plausibly move to the final showdown. I’ve done this with a number of short stories; writing even a bad finish frees me up to start on the second draft. While this is pretty much the ending of the original novel (this was my second book; an earlier rewrite was my fourth or fifth) it’s also different in key ways. Now that I have it down, albeit very rough, I can replot. I’ll be discussing more about the book next week. Wrapping the draft up took about two days this week.
What else got done? I spent Tuesday working on stuff for The Local Reporter. Unfortunately none of it got far enough along for a story as everyone was getting up to steam after the holidays. It will pay off down the road, though.
I donated blood today. Always a good thing to do. I managed to get all my exercising done. And I ran a bunch of Saturday errands yesterday because we have a winter storm on the way and I don’t fancy driving in sleet.
Oh, I submitted the only two short stories I don’t have out — Obolos and Bleeding Blue — to new markets. I think they’re both long shots but I decided not to “self reject.” And over at Atomic Junk Shop I have a post up about changes at DC Comics in late 1967 and some questions about Christmas movies and time travel. Below, Carmine Infantino’s cover for one of those changes, Catwoman’s return to the Bat-books after more than a decade.
In short, nothing terribly spectacular, but wrapping up Asunder after a couple of months when the work was just crawling feels very good. To end the post, here’s Wisp, somewhat more of a climber since we moved her indoors.
#SFWApro. Cover by Jack Kirby, all rights remain with current holder.
