The unfinished 50,000

So there we have it. Prize level achieved, tale unfinished.

My Gemstone reached the 50,000 mark (actually as I write this over 51,000) and the story is far from being finished. There again I never thought a finished story would be neatly complete at the prized 50k mark. It would make a thin novel.

The sort of thing that perhaps an established writer could contemplate between great works but we lesser mortals know we have to put a bit more substance in.

I admit it didn't surprise me that I could reach 50k in 12 days. I did that last time round and to a degree November 2011 'went flat' as I neared the end of the story with 55,000 words on paper well before the end of the time allowed.

Interestingly, I have written more like 52 or 53 thousand already because on a couple of days I committed the 'sin' of going through a chapter I had written and reworking it. You are, as a Nano player, not supposed to do that. But while I do not think that such revision makes the story even remotely ready for serious(?) publication I have to feel the 'feel' of it is correct.

In one case I felt a character was acting, or speaking, out of character if you see what I mean. I have to feel the story, even in frantic type and rush mode, is one that I want to tell. If things are not clear or the ideas are sloppily presented it is less a case of going back and making it better later. More a demand to myself to get it half-polished.

I am a reader as I write and any awkward sequences or badly-worked paragraphs will combine to make me doubt if my effort is worthwhile.

The question is now do I still fervently pursue the same daily word rate in a bid to make Gemstone reach, say, 100,000 words or do I slow down and think more carefully about how the story ends? I know writers are supposed to enter the act of authoring in the spirit of knowing what the end point is, but I may yet want to develop a different ending to the one I had vaguely decided on back at the beginning of November.

I have, as I mentioned in another posting, finally crossed the line of the 'big incident' of my original idea. But during a poor night's sleep last night I came up with the idea of throwing something unexpected into the story. That's been done and there are a lot of implications from it.

I may have painted my characters into a corner by the event (a loss of freedom, without going into detail, potentially hampers the plot) but I like setting myself challenges. My main characters, and in particular Gemma Lawson herself, will have to find a way to overcome this new barrier.

That is the next stage, and I have a few days to do it in.