Coming Up For Air – An Update

Hi Friends.

Good news and bad news (well, not really bad news, just not so good news).

The good news is that I am feeling much better and I have come a long ways to catching up on my word count. The bad news is that I am not yet caught up, like I had planned. If I continue at the pace of the last few days, I should catch up by Monday or Tuesday.

Thursday is a dead writing day, turkeys and friends and all. That leaves me Friday and Saturday to zoom ahead and win NaNoWriMo (50K words). The other not good news is that even though I am past the 30,000 word count, I am not yet half-way through the plot of my story. Instead of being 60,000 words as planned, it looks like it will be closer to 90,000. Gulp. This means that I probably won’t finish the first draft until mid to late December.

But have no fear. Come early December, when I no longer have the pressure of NaNo with which to contend, I will be doing a little editing every few days so I can give you the promised chapters. (Just to let you know, the story is broken down into 4 sections, each was to have 6 chapters. Part One wound up with a prologue and 9 chapters. I just finished the first chapter of Part Two, and am fairly sure that I can get to the end of this section with at most 7 chapters – giving me some wiggle room).

I appreciate those of you who have read my chapters, and these interludes. You all rock!

OK, now I have a question for you. Please leave a comment.

When NaNo is over, I have two options. I can a) continue to publish rough chapters like I have done for the first bit and plod on through the end of the book, as time permits – OR b) I can go back and add some details to the prologue and Chapters 1 – 3, ideas that have come to me as I am writing these later chapters. For instance, I heavily implied in the Prologue that the Felon had raped Edna Towler. For reasons that make for a smoother, if more complicated story, I want to rewrite some of that chapter, making the rape something implied rather than fact, if that makes sense. A rape never happened, but the characters don’t know that yet, they may or may not assume that such an act actually happened.

So here is my plea for your advice… Would you rather I not include these ideas yet, that I just keep plugging away and post new chapters and save them for the heavy revision stage (meaning you will have to wait a long time to read them) – or would you rather I revise these chapters to include the new ideas so you can read them sooner than later?

Thanks for your advice, and please don’t hesitate to leave a comment on this or anything else you wish to share. I’d love to hear from you.

Mark Adam Thomas

 

All images and content copyright © 2011-2014 ~ Mark Adam Thomas

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