Feast or Famine

Well, the high-school shooting backstory of the current novel, which I once thought would be contained in a single chapter and has since exploded into three, may now not be quite long enough.

Stupid books and going and evolving even while you're working on it.

I had a flash of inspiration tonight about the book, about approaching the story almost as having dual narratives -- the current, insomnia-based storyline, and the backstory, school-shooting storyline.

And the idea really onle stumbled out of a notion that I've known about from the get go, that each of these two narratives are ending with something very, very similar happening.

No, I'm not going to say what that similar thing is.

And no, I don't care if you're the type who flips to the end of the book before you even start reading the beginning.

And if you are that type, shame on you.

The point is this: For the last two chapters -- which were two chapters longer than I was expecting the back-story to play out over -- I've been sort of speeding up the back-story narrative, hoping I could get out of it before it took up too much time or space.

Now, suddenly, I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd taken a bit more time with it, because if I could line up those two different narrative events, it would, pardon my french, absofuckinglutely rock.

So now, having spent two chapters trying to speed up all the high school violence stuff, now I'm going to slow it down.

Take my time.

Let it breathe.

I still might end up having to a do lot of restructuring work on the rewrite -- inflating some of the earlier stuff so the whole narrative is a bit more balanced.

Or maybe everything will come out just perfectly, exactly as it should be.

Maybe pigs will fly too.

Another 2,000 words down tonight. Current word count: 35,860.

I rock.