Monday, November 30, 2009

NaNoWriMo Done / James Reasoner

So NaNoWriMo ends at midnight. Luckily I finished my novel over the Thanksgiving weekend. However, calculations show I'm ten thousand words short of the 50k word goal; I'm also far short of the 80,000 words I imagined this ms. to be. But do not let your heart be troubled, I have ideas for extending and expanding the ms. and fleshing out the character relationships. More exposition may come in handy, too. The book may weigh in only at 65-70,000 words but I'll take that.

Anyway it was a fun exercise and got me back in the habit of writing every day. Now I'll move through December with revisions and second drafts and have three chapters ready to send out once 2010 begins. Once this is done I want to start on the outline of a novel that I've put off because it's terribly autobiographical, and something like that is always hard to write, yet has the potential, I think, of being a terrific crime story when all the pieces are put together.

Tonight I read a great short story by James Reasoner called "Graveyard Shift". It featured a character who works a convenience store at odd hours who comes up against a potential hold up man and the twist at the end will make your jaw drop. Very short, to-the-point, no wasted space. I enjoyed it a lot. Nice work, James.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks, Brian. That story has been good to me over the years. There was a short film based on it that could be seen on YouTube, but when I searched just now I couldn't find it.

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  2. Sounds like NaNo worked well for you, Brian. Me too. Really built up the writing muscles. Of course, compared to me, James Reasoner is Conan of Cimmeria when it comes to writing muscles, but I'm a lot stronger than I was.

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  4. @Evan, Strength comes with time. I've been writing for 15 years and only now and good enough to step out.

    @James, I was thinking your story would make a great short film. I'm an actor, too, and do quite a few of those.

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  5. I saw the film first that James mentioned and it simply knocked me for a loop. It has that O. Henry style ending I dig. Of course, the written story itself is brilliant.

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