The Writing Moment

Coffee as cold as the outside cement sidewalks was tasted, accepted, swallowed. Another writing session done. He’d written almost a quarter million words in that first exciting blurt phase. It had lasted about seven months. Everything thought up was woven into the narrative. Now, the cooler, methodical revision segment was upon him. After six weeks, he’d completed almost two hundred pages of revising. Four hundred pages remained. Total word count had been chopped to below 190K.

He’d always known multiple chapters were goners. They were nice placeholders for thought and plotting for a while. Now the story was taking shape. The words were more precious. They had to prove themselves as worthy of belonging.

The Writing Moment

He’d become pretty good at the blurt stage of fiction. This was about writing like crazy, inviting the muses in and plying them with drink, food, and drugs, getting them to open up and share. Volumes are written about every aspect of the novel from the concept to setting, characters, plot, and arcs. He needed to become better at the later stages of editing, revising, and developing a novel.

The Writing Moment

As he edited, he was reading others’ fiction. More than once, reading a chapter or two (they were small chapters) of This Is How You Lose the Time War prompted him to steal back to his computer and resume his editing. It made up a perfect sequence of hours, reading, writing, editing, drinking coffee, and snacking.

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