Writing Notes, Saturday, August 4th
So Tuesday of last week I fired up my WiP, Wanton, and put in the dreaded numbering system I used when a story unexpectedly mutates into a novella. I didn’t want to do it – I was desperately trying to keep Wanton to novelette length – but after you hit 4,402 words of a story and you’ve only sketched out two-thirds of the first act, it’s a pretty good sign that you’re not going to be writing something that can be wrapped up in 10,000 words or less. The damn thing has chapters now, which usually means I need to back off and do some cursory planning so I have an overall structure. If you want to know what my internal monologue was like for most of Tuesday, it went something like this: Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. When I was done with that I actually started an internal debate about whether I should shelve Wanton for
