the 200,000 word novel Goal of the summer

So I think it's time i have to make a vow for myself.

I don't know if I'll be able to keep it --- but I really fucking want to. 

The vow is that, even if i get dead sick of this curret vampire story I'm writing, I'm not going to stop writing in it, until I reach --bare minimum -- 200,000 words. Yes, you read that right. 200,000 words. I'm going for the big kahuna here. The longest story I've ever written was, if i remember correctly, about 70-80,000 words. I think I have managed to successfully get to 70-80k about 5-6 times... I don't really remember. They're all just sitting on my hard drive somewhere. Normally, as many of my readers on this blog will know, I tend to just write short stories, and then I always tend to set out to write longer stories, but get halted around 20-30,000 words. I have many stories currently halted around that point.

But for some reason now, it's nearly June 2018, and I want to torture myself, and set out for the big kahuna. I want a 200,000 word book, and maybe I just don't give a god damn if I start to lose the plot or if it gets all muddied and confusing and I go crazy. I'm going to shoot for it anyways.

At the moment, I'm at the dreaded 22,000 words, and I woke up about 5 hours ago, and I Have not yet written a word. The sensation of being stalled is coming upon me, but I'm going to throw it out of the way and keep trodding on. I'll tell you something: Normally I don't even like to set the goal--especially to get all the way to 200,000 words -- because it can wind up depressing me, and then making me feel shitty, and writing even less words than normal (because i will start to refuse to try a new short story). I'm making the goal now, however, cus I think the vampire story set in Texas -- this is what im writing now -- is just easy enough for me to write, that I'll be able to actually pull thru and get that sum of words. I'm not sure how long it'll take. Could be the case that I seriously sit here and try to write just this one story for the entire duration of the summer. (OF course i find this idea incredibly daunting).  It could also be the case that I can spit 200,000 words faster than I think. After all, I started this story on May 20th, and I managed to get 22K words in just 4 days. That means 5.5 thousand words a day. At that rate, I can maybe look forward to hitting the goal in just 36 days. Sounds insane. Sounds not likely. But who the hell knows. I need a book with that many words. I don't know why. I just need it.

Here's the lil trick I'm using though, in order to get that far: I am writing in the George Martin Game of Thrones style, which means every few chapters, or sometime just every few pages, I switch out to a new characters point of view. In George's book A Storm of Swords, which is 973 pages (414,000 words) he tells the tale from the perspective of literally 12 different characters. In my book so far, I have inserted 6. I have 6 more to go until 12 that means and...honestly, though it sounds a bit absurd, I'm even going to allow myself to insert more points of view and more characters , if I start to feel I need to. It'll be confusing --- fuck yes it will -- but i don't really care. Like I say, I'm determined to get to the 200,000 word finish line by any means necessary. At this point, I don't even care what happens to the story. I cannot back out. I can't do it. I must fight tooth and nail to get there...and I'm going to live by the mantra of "insert new characters when necessary" as well as "bad writing is better than no writing" as well.

Oftentimes a major problem when you're writing -- i say this to folks all the time --- is that you'll get far along in a tale you really dig, and then you get scared of ruining it. You know that the first 100 pages you wrote are good, but then the ideas start to dry out a bit, and the characters start doing things you don't expect, and you get afraid to "ruin it". Normally I try to take a breather and think things through at that point. This time, no. I'm literally just storming straight ahead. Whatever idea comes ,thats the idea I'll write. Even if it starts making little to no sense. Honestly, you'd be surprised how many ideas that seem to make no sense initially often wind up making perfect sense the next day, when you read them back, anyways......

Oh, theres also the other method I'm using now, which I feel I never really used before. I call it the episodic method, and basically this means that, instead of thinking this all like a book now, I'm trying to think of it more like a television show. The reason why is simple: Unlike novels, which tend to generally obsess over one specific event that must come to a climax at the end, TV shows tend to introduce a whole new problem every episode, and often the new problems in each episode are wildly different than the last one. There is also the fact that TV shows love to repeat certain things in every episode, in order to make you feel at home with the character. I.e. When we all watched True Blood, we often hung out and took a breather with Sookie Stackhouse in her kitchen, in episode after episode, no matter what was happening. Then we also occasionally hung out with her at job, doing the same thing, over and over. In books this usually isn't the case. Especially in old books. But I'm now realizing that one big secret to the 400,000 word novels is that they're writing in episodic form, instead of a more traditional novel form. So, fuck it, I'm going to try it and see what happens. There's no ultimate climax here. There's just episode by episode.

So there you have it. This will be my first journal entry, i guess, where i discuss this new goal. Hopefuly I'll keep up with it. Now its time to pour the black coffe and get started. 5.5 thousand words must be written today! I think I'm going to insert a new character right away. A vampire who plays rock and roll. Nicolai, we're ging to call him.

How many words can I squeeze out of Nicolai? And just how will he be involved with Franny (who is the main character, for teh most part). Yesterday, for instance, at a scene when i almost stalled, i had Franny fight a weird  4 legged monster on the side of a highway in Texas. The monster ate her little cousin. The scene was absurd, but i liked it. What should happen with Nicolai now? Should he turn Fran into a vampire?

---notes on writing