You see, I'm terrible at updating this thing. I had thought about doing it a week or so ago, but kept putting it off. Ugh. Anyway, I'm much farther in the book now and I've read several books since the last time I put up a blog post. I read Dean Koontz Frankenstein book one, The Taking, The Door to December...and now I'm working on Fear Nothing.

In my own novel I passed page 300 and I'm now up to around 340. I have learned a lot about myself as a writer by doing the rewrite of this book. I can remember back a few months ago where in my mind I was thinking that page 300 was a ways off. I could see how the story was flowing, but I didn't know how long it would take me to get there. Stories always do take on a mind of their own and around page 300 I figured out how the book will end. The journey is always fun, but at some point you have to look at what you have so far and see where it's ultimately leading. I don't even remember the last chapter I wrote about in this blog, but now I'm up to chapter 28. I have several threads going at the same time and keeping all of the characters and their motives in check is becoming more and more daunting. The bad thing is that with Dean Koontz I tend to read more than write and I have to force myself, sometimes, to put the book down and write some more. Shame on you Dean Koontz! Anyway, I don't know how much more I have to write.

I have found that I, for many years, have thought of length of a book. If it's about this it's going to be x amount of pages. Sometimes I have to literally tell myself to stop thinking that way and just let the story figure itself out. If there's more to tell, then tell it. Tell the story until you can't tell it anymore. As the days go by I get more and more excited about the breadth and scope of it. I have read different blogs on this time a few times about how to write and what makes a writer. A good bit of advice I read was that just because it happens, doesn't make it worth writing about and someone reading it. There are things in the book that I know are happening, but writing them down doesn't make the book any better. I write what needs written. I don't have a specific deadline, but I'm hoping for 'by the end of the year' for this rewrite. Now, as long as I can stop reading Dean Koontz for a few minutes...