I have been working on Long Night Moon (the third book in the Seasons of the Moon series) for about A MILLION YEARS now. Maybe more like a million and a half.
Okay, since November. Which is like two months. Deal with it.
The end of books are my specialty. I do kickass climaxes that are like KERPOW! BIFF! KERBLOOEY! SHABLAM! At least six times cooler than Batman.
But this one is just not coming together.
The problem is that I'm not quite sure how to execute the dramatic conclusion. I've been excited about this book ever since I wrote Six Moon Summer, so you would think I would know exactly how everything plays out. But no. I know generally what happens, and the fallout of that, but now how it occurs.
At first, I thought the problem was that I had written 90% of the book in a couple short weeks and needed a break. So I gave myself a break. I wrote a novelette in the meantime (which you can get for free!) and spent a lot of time snuggling the Helpful Baby.
Then I had an emergency appendectomy (sigh), which was kind of a mixed blessing/curse. Nobody likes having surgery, but suddenly I found myself with TWO WHOLE WEEKS of free time on my hands while I recovered! Writing books while hopped up on opiates can't be any tougher than writing with a bottle of wine, right?
WRONG.
I'm now over a week into my recovery and I STILL haven't finished this STUPID book.
(Not that I have high expectations or anything.)
I'm at the point where I've shifted focus to The Darkest Gate (sequel to Death's Hand), even though I'm literally 98% done with Long Night Moon. That book is mostly written, needing only heavy revision to be prepared for the masses, so it's lower on my priority list. But at this rate, it's going to be ready first.
Grump.
In the meantime, I'm preparing to announce the cover for Long Night Moon. It's very pretty. I think you guys will love it. Here's a little teaser:
I'll be showing it off very soon, so hang tight! It's going to be ready before the STUPID BOOK. Which I'm going to go back and try to finish AGAIN. (I've seriously written about three endings for this one. You have no idea how annoyed I'm getting.)
*rolls back sleeves*
Okay, Long Night Moon, you want a fight? I'll give you a fight! Grrarr!
I'm trying really really hard to work up some sympathy here. For the appendectomy, no problem there. Daughter Dearest had that when she was 16 and was in & out of the hospital the same day. That's no fun.
ReplyDeleteAs for the writing, seeing as it takes me around two years to write a novel… well I just have to go :-P
I had my surgery at about 5 am and was kicked out at 3 pm the same day. Really nuts, but I wanted to get home to the Helpful Baby.
ReplyDeleteWriting is different for everyone. :) I don't notice a significant difference in the quality of my rough drafts if it takes me three weeks to write versus three months, or longer. When a book is taking months, it means I'm spending a lot of time not writing.
If I sit down and write 2000 words a day, a rough draft really shouldn't take longer than five or six weeks. (Less with these books, because this series is only about 50k per book.)
The fact it's been so long means I'm procrastinating a lot, getting stuck, writing myself in circles, and generally engaging in unproductive behavior. That's frustrating.
You know it takes me years sometimes to write books, so I am so envious of that right now. But we're all different. ;)
ReplyDeleteI've done the dreaded my-subconscious-doesn't-wanna-end-this-so-I'll-keep-putting-off-the-end dance and it sucks.
Only advice I can give you is bash your way through. Or ignore it. I've done that before.
Cheers,
E.
Sorry to hear about your emergency surgery! I had no idea. Hope you're feeling better.
ReplyDeleteI totally feel you on the not-being-able-to-finish-the-stupid-book thing. I've been sitting on the last 15k of the final book in my trilogy for over a month now. Still no motivation to finish. Same issues - wrapping it all up in a nice, pretty, satisfying bow. Meh.
Best of luck. To both of us!
Erin, don't you do most of your writing by dictating for a speech-to-text program? That takes MUCH longer.
ReplyDeleteKendall, I'm feeling pretty good now. It's hard trying to recover when the Helpful Baby is helpfully punching me in the stomach, but he doesn't know any better. ;) I don't have the excuse of worrying about the end of the series yet. I still have to squeeze out one more book after this... argh. I get ulcers just thinking about it.
Actually, I'm back to typing, thank God, but I still need to be careful. So no 4k days for me. But slow and steady works. I just broke 68k on my WIP today. Feels so good. :D
ReplyDeleteCheers,
E.