Homefront: Week 6

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Alright, so I’m behind. Ish.

It’s entirely likely that I’ll write more words later tonight, but I felt I needed to watch some football today. I rarely do, even though it’s one of the reasons why I have a Very Large Television ™ But Thursday night, there were no words. Last night, there were too many, and I settled for some pages of blocking instead.

And this morning, I slept in. Again. I don’t begrudge me the choice, as clearly I needed it. I’ve been using a lot of brain over the last week on several different projects, including this one. I’m still finding interesting things to write about, but now that Homefront is in the Final Act, interesting isn’t good enough anymore. Every new word has to matter, and as a result the MS has advanced a paltry 11 thousand words in the last seven days, bringing it to just over 84,000 words. It will get to where it’s going. There’s plenty of time.

In other words, it must pop, Pop, POP!
In other words, it must pop, Pop, POP!

The Final Act means that there is no more room for wiggling. Things mentioned at this point in the book must be resolved within 30 thousand or so words. I don’t have to answer every question in the universe, but I must at least address them to my own, my editor’s, and ultimately your satisfaction. This is the part of the book where we start to say goodbye, and where every conversation might end a little sooner than you think it will.

Unless, of course, your editor asked you for that kind of thing. Then it’s implied.

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I’ve considered skipping ahead. I have almost the entirely of the next chapter written out in my head. I’ve thought about writing the final chapter and working my way backward. I’ve even though about just blocking the entire rest of the book and filling in the blanks as I go. After all, I have a few more weeks before the book is due, and I’ve written 30,000 plus words on on very tight schedules before (I’m Looking at YOU, Hearts of Iron and Blood and Ashes).

But my gut tells me to push on through, and I was very happy with the results this morning when I did just that.

So what’s next for next week? No predictions, that’s what. My goal was to finish the book by next Friday, and spend the rest of the month really tightening it up. But looking at my calendar, I see there are three weeks left in January, and if I write 11,000 words in each of them I’ll arrive at exactly the same place.

Not so bad for a marketing hack.

So it’s time to put on pants, I think, and venture forth into the world. Tomorrow there will be words, and words on the day after. Always words tomorrow.

And stuff.

2009

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