At about 11 today, I finished the novella.
Total word count, for them’s that care: 31,518. Lets hope I can trim it to make it a bit tighter. In pages, depending on breaks and what not, I think that means we’re talking about ~80-90 pages book pages.
The title is “Knowing Mars,” and it’s sort of a coming out story, I guess. This project, and the other one that I’m thinking about, and will probably start soon, really focus on ideas that center around historiography and historical narratives, and the impact of these stories. You’ll see at some point, of course. As Melissa Scot points out It’s hard to talk about the process and ideas behind the creative process “without making it sound either stilted […] or mystical.” So I think explaining myself too much might just get me in trouble.
This project has been a revival and remaining of some material that I envisioned as sort of historical backstroke for the novel that I wrote when I was in high school. I realized that these three pages (and possibly the next several) were the best part of the 500+ pages that I wrote then, so I ran with it, and ended up with this pleasant little novella.
I’m better at telling stories now, and I’m not such a n00b about a lot of the mechanics of fiction writing. I also have a better sense of the genre, so I think this is likely to feel a lot less trite.
Having said that, if everyone has a million words of crap in them that they have to get out, then this puts me at only about say, 160k in terms of fiction writing…
I’m going to do a very quick once through and then send it off to a group of readers, I hope by the beginning of next week.