Day Thirty - 57,089 words and counting

I'm writing a novel. All my progress can be found on my private blog. The commentary for each day's work can be found below.

I'm picking up the story today back with Elma. It's it nice when a plan comes together? Not that I can really claim to have planned how all of it worked out. But perhaps you might remember what I said about leaving handles behind.

Well, today I picked up one of those handles. Upon first arriving in her new room, Bryony noticed a couple of yarn-wrapped sticks on Yancy's bed, which must have meant something to her. I didn't pursue it at the time.

Now I have. Elma had a gift for Bryony, but had not expected Yancy. She gave her a length of yarn. That's a cultural thing for Yancy--she is supposed to add different kinds of yarn to it, each color to represent a stage in her life. She has just ended the first stage and begun a second. Elma is aware of this tradition and gives her a beautiful piece of yarn to use.

I totally had not planned that when I introduced it back in, what, chapter 7 or so? But now I can see the potential of it. It can now become a device to indicate the passage of time. As the story will eventually stretch over about a decade or more, with gaps in between, that will become important.

By the way--I've been asked recently how far along I am in the story. My estimate is about 25% of the way through. At about the 33% mark, there is going to be a jump in time of about five or six years. There will be flashbacks to the skipped time, but it will be done in the framework of that future time, when Bryony is 18 or 19. I'm going to try to cover a period in her life that lasts until her early 20s.

Thereafter it gets a little fuzzier, but I'd say around the 67% mark, there will be another jump in time, this time to Bryony at around 27 or 28, and I will then carry through into the end of the story. So I guess that's more of a fifteen year time span. Given that I've only covered about a week in her life so far, I can understand the doubters who think I'll never get there.

But I'm fast approaching something that I believe will be the trickiest thing to pull off. One of the defining things about Bryony's character right now is what she doesn't know. She has a week's worth of memory at present. That's it. When I jump forward in time, I'm going to be adding all sorts of memory and experience to her without the reader having seen her accumulate it.

I've got to somehow carry the thread of her character through that change, showing what is different and also what is the same. I'm looking forward to the challenge, but I'm also a little nervous about it.

Still, that's all in the future. I probably won't hit that point until mid-November, or thereabouts. There's a lot of work for me to do to get to that point. One last note about it, though--since the story is set in three major eras, I think I'm going to make note of it by calling each section Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. They're all intended to be published together, but I think an internal division will make the split more apparent to the reader.

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As for today's section, I was able to get across what I wanted about Yancy's thing, and I even named it--sun sticks, thought that may change. Whatever, I liked it.

If you don't care for the way today's section ended, know this: I wasn't up to delving into Zeoly's backstory tonight. But you'll be happy to know that at least some of that is coming tomorrow. And in the finished novel, that won't be a cliffhanger point, but just another line in the chapter.

I may have to reevaluate once again where 14 ends and 15 begins. I now kind of think that my original plan to finish the evening in chapter 15 was a good one. The Bryony part of the story will pause there while we check back in with Merona.

Do any of you care about the Merona/Cohenrad subplot at the moment? I know it may seem minor at the moment, and it may distract from better-liked characters. I can't really judge, but I'd appreciate your comments.

But I'll have to wait, because we won't get that far tomorrow, when Chapter 14 concludes and Chapter 15 begins.

Today's Total: 2,012 / 1,689 words (119.1%)
Progress to Date: 57,089 / 50,658 words (112.7%, 3.8 days ahead)
October Progress: 57,089 / 52,347 words (109.1%)
November Progress: 0 / 50,670 (0.0%)
Est. Completion: 57,089 / 250,000 words (22.8%, 114 days to go)