Novel Nightmares

Writing a novel is a frightening ordeal. I'm not talking Stephen King. I mean spending months working out the story, more months researching, countless midnights typing until your hands are stiff and you wake up wondering why your fingers are soaking in your margarita glass... but realize it does make them feel better. And after all that planning, just before you send this beautiful work off to be slaughtered by the publishers, you think "but there's more to the story! If I just add another couple chapters..."

Before you know it, you've spent a few more months typing away into the dark hours of the night, watching with horror as the sun rises and shines through your bedroom window and you realize the alarm clock will go off in exactly twenty minutes. Before you know it, your sweet little novella has turned into a full novel, and that novel has turned into a freaking huge epic... and that epic has sequels!!!

Well, my sweet novella lost its innocence almost seven years ago. That's when the mindblock broke and the words came pouring out so fast I couldn't keep up. I dropped college classes so I could type more. I even dropped an English class! And when it was over, my sweet tale had developed into over 600 pages (written in only a few months). And now, seven years later, I have broken it into a series. Yes, it will be a serial story. I hate those, but it was either that or convince a publisher to print a way-over-a-thousand-page novel by a relatively novice novelist.

Oh, maybe my day will come when I can write out a massive work and my publisher will thank me that it's so big, there's no way it could go into paperback (hums the Beatles' Paperback Writer for a moment in reflection). For now I'll be happy if they accept this as it is. That is, once I finish writing the damn thing!

still singing: "It's a thousand pages, give or take a few, I'll be writing more in a week or two"

And today (well, yesterday, it's nearly morning again), I had an epiphany which I'm going to kick myself for when my brain isn't befuddled. I broke my story down further, into five novels (I had so hoped for a sweet little trilogy). It works so much better this way. It really is five separate stories, especially the last two segments. Still, that means a god-awful lot more writing, and my margarita glass isn't staying cold anymore with summer approaching.