Friday 11 April 2008

Taking Stock of my Novel-in-Progress

I'm now halfway through my novel-in-progress, a horror story set in Civil War Missouri. With 170 pages (42,000 words) done, it's time to take a breather and do a serious edit on what I already have before I continue.

I'm very happy with the project's forward momentum. I started on Jan. 2, after writing it in my head for a couple of months. Not starting to write immediately after I got the concept really helped me get a coherent idea of the story, and helped get a lot down on paper in a short time.

But now that I'm halfway through, I have an even better idea of what my story is about and where it should be going. So now I'm going back and filling in some details, adding a few more plot elements, and enriching some of the description. While I'm tempted to keep shooting along to the end, my gut feeling tells me I need to tighten the first half before forging ahead with the second. And as an author I've learned to trust my gut feelings.

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Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Civil War Horror blog, where he focuses on Civil War and Wild West history.

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