Call it a Ron-only Novel Dare. Call it a delayed NaNoWriMo. Call it what you will, but at the end of the day what I’ve actually got is a complete first draft novel in a total of 31 days–probably some 55K words.
Pretty danged cool.
I sat down to write this baseball-ish fantasy on November 10, and actually finished the draft last Friday, December 10. Even better, the structure is–in my opinion–pretty solid, and the story is clean. I’m pretty sure the second draft rewrite is going to be a breeze.
I tend to not talk about what I’m working on too much because I guess I’m one of those guys who doesn’t get much help from talking about it before the fact. But now that it was done, I told Lisa it was finished and we discussed parts of it. “You seem like you really enjoyed writing this,” she said at one point. And I did. I had a total blast. Better yet, I think writing this might really help me as I turn back to the more pure-SF thing I was working on before taking this detour. It really honed this sense of character in me. At least that’s the story I’m telling myself.
Anyway…
Between shoveling snow and whatnot, I started the re-write this morning. We’ll see where it goes.
[grin]
If you haven’t read this story yet, you should. It’s a classic coming-of-age tale built around baseball and the power the game has to connect people. Visit http://pebabaseball.com/index.php/news-archive-pebalinks-56 and look for articles written by “Casey Neal”. I’m sure you’ll become as absorbed with the story as I was.