Wordy Weekends

Well, last thursday night, when I arrived home I looked at my word count.
it was something like 12 000 for one book and 18 000 for the other.

Then I thought
On sunday i should be on 30 000 on both.

And that means...

I've got to write 18 000 on one and 12 000 on the other... roughly...

In three days.

Which means 10 000 a day.
(a healthy diet)

Well, I'm now more or less on 27 500 on both.
Short of my objective but definitely much closer to what I needed doing!

And let me tell you, I struggled this weekend. I struggled because I wanted to watch films and relax and read and read stuff that could be quite important for the book (and i did do a bit of all these things, just not as much as I'd like to...) but I managed to stay more or less on track (yes, there were guitar playing sessions that lasted for more than an hour to chill and collect my ideas...) and do the deed.

And once again I discover that "this stupid idea I had for a book that is now so obviously proven doesn't work" (that was my down moment on saturday... a few hours actually) is somewhat wrong...

The Lost Years was more or less on track by friday/easrly hours saturday, so I spent the rest of the weekend focussing on It's Not Too Dark Here. After a while I knew pretty damn well which scenes I needed to write but I'd lost the will power to do them. It seemed pretty pointless.
I decided to call it a day on 23 or 24 000. I'd done my best, that was it.
Then I decided to just write the synopsis for what I need to write today (still). It was a scene where the main character comes face to face with a wild tiger (and yes, there are no wild tigers naturally on that island so some very naughty character must've brought it in...).
And there was going to be a clash there...
(this is a thriller after all... what better than tigers on desert island preying on unarmed men?!)
I just didn't know how they'd meet.
I was tired.
I didn't want to write anymore.
I wanted to sleep.
(bad!)
But the images about what was going to happen after they'd met were so vivid that I started writing them down.

I thought I didn't have enough stuff for the book.
And I might just have more than enough now...
And a few thousand words more for my word count that day. I wrote for another hour or two hours. I can't remember. I was in that mood where everything just flows. If I'd been more awake I'd continued to write until I'd run out of inspiration.
Unfortunately, these things only seem to happen when it's already 1.30 in the morning and I'm about to call it quits.
(I'm sure there's a pattern in there somewhere...)

This morning I wrote a bit more tying up loose ends. And I still have a bit more to do today when I get home.

But the most important part was that, a chapter that I thought was going to be quick turned out to be long but extremely exciting to write (and, I think, to read as well). A chapter that I thought was going to be dull and predictable, turned out to be almost central to the whole book. For me it turned it's direction around. And managed to do something that I'd wanted from the onset. Which is to make this character respected in some way by the audience. Make him human.
I think this chapter takes the bonding between reader and character to a different level. For the first time we see this aspect in Preston Nume. And it took me by surprise. But it made sense so I tried not to change it much.

I'll admit that, instinctively, a different outcome was present but, that's one of the pleasures of writing, you CAN turn things around and twist the story to your particular wishes.

In terms of The Lost Years, I'm on the doorstep of the Egyptian phase. I've been reading some stuff about Hermes Trismegistus (that existed a couple of millennia before Jesus - so he won't be a character, if that's what you're thinking...) and about the Egyptian Pantheon of gods.

And this is another of those chapters that I don't have the faintest idea how I'm gonna write it...

In an ideal world I'd spend a couple of decades reading books and learning Egyptian mythology and THEN write this chapter.

Because I live on Earth, Europe, UK, London, it has to be more like some Wikipedia on the diagonal side of perception, mix that with my very own and true to life experiences and ideas and start typing!

But seriously, this book isn't really about historical accuracy (though I have amazed myself at how much of that actually is there so far), it's much more about the spiritual journey of this man that was to become one of our most powerful myths.
Obviously it is a metaphor for any journey of this type. That's my objective. I want people to identify as much with the character as with the journey itself.
The fact that we have Egyptian mythology, Greek philosophy, Assirian mysticism, Hinduism and Buddhism (these are the next chapters, in that order) is merely to frame this with a sense of completion and UNIFICATION between all these different view points.

So I'm not interested in Egyptian mythology per se, but really more in the aspects it mirrors that day and age. It becomes a vehicle to create a better sense of time and place, of the obstacles that would be those living in those days and their own journeys.

In any case the penultimate chapter will be one of the most important (and one that I am incredibly eager to start writing... but it makes sense that I wait so that I can put all the previous chapters in perspective throughout that one...) of the whole book. This is where the journey achieves a first sense of completion, of roundness. Of true purpose and meaning.
It represents our true awakening.
Where the masks have fallen beyond return.
It represents the beginning of what many call the Christ Consciousness.

So, I'm sure it will be an interesting one...
(even though I still don't know very well what I'm gonna write when I get there... then again, what else is new?!)

Peace!