The wire?

[elfs]

As I write this, with ten days left to go in the month, I am down to the wire. I'm at 45,656 words and I've started to realize two things: one, there's a Hell of a lot more story left to write, and two, I have no idea how Zia & Polly's story is going to end. I do know how it's going to "end"; I understand Zia's sudden and harsh conflict, the realization that she knows what Polly is trying to figure out: not how to get out of the relationship, but what will happen when (not if) the relationship ends, and for the first time in her life Zia is scared: she's never had a relationship, this one seemed to be working well, but it's built on very shallow ground. But how Zia and Polly work through these realizations? Not so much.

But the real point is that at 45,656 words, I'm less than 5,000 words away from the "ending." Hell, I can write that much in two days. That is, if the goal was just to write 50,000 words.

But it's not. It never has been. The goal has been to tell stories. In this case, to get back to my roots as a pornographer and tell a story with lots and lots and lots (oy, vey, lots!) of fucking. I'm realizing that, since there is more story to tell, more threads to follow, more love and passion in the undercurrents of the story... I don't know what to do. Part of me will know that the story is incomplete, that there's a lot more to tell, and a lot more to rewrite to make it all make sense.

But part of me will be convinced that at 50,000 words I've hit a goal, and goals are where people stop. And I've enjoyed having that goal, because it was something to work towards. I didn't pad this story, didn't try to fake it. There are 50,000 words of characters struggling to understand what's happening them as they leap from their TL12 culture to one verging on TL17. That's not something to be wasted. But I frequently just write with no goal, just to see what happens next. Having the word count and time goal pushed me. I think I did a good job. Now I just have to learn something useful from the experience.

Comments

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

Hm, the Pendorverse seems to max out somewhere between TL15 and TL16. It doesn't have instant perfect medicine (the perfect medicine takes time), or teleportation drives (getting around takes time, too, at least between systems), but it does have instant local transportation (S-disks).

Heck, some of the TL14 things mentioned in this table (http://www.omnology.com/gurps-levels.html) aren't ever mentioned that I recall. Total conversion? It seems likely that they've figured it out, given the descriptions of other tech developments, but I can't recall it.

Then again, you may be using a different set of TLs. I know they changed in the recent 4th edition release, which is what that table appears to be based on. My books are in boxes, unfortunately.. I need more bookshelves.

Or is this new story outside the Pendorverse? I don't recall you having placed it in your posts about it thus far, though I may just not be remembering.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Modded +1 Gratuitous GURPS reference

[elfs.livejournal.com]

GURPS? You forget how old I am. I have a first edition Traveller, and that's where my numbers come from. GURPS is for you kids! In my day to generate a character we had to roll hundreds of six-sided dice, uphill, through the snow, both ways, and if we didn't like what we got, we lived with it and we learned to like it. Get off my lawn!

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

...Get off my lawn!

HA! Once again your writing sends me to bed with a grin. :)

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Ow.

Modded +1 Pwned teh Noob

first edition Traveller

[rkda.livejournal.com]

Travellers is still my favorite RPG universe to play it =))

As for the story...here are the thoughts that come to mind as you lay out the situation...

50K words is roughly half of the full 100K - 120K word novel that this story ends up becomming. There is likely a prequel, and maybe a sequel to the story as well which are both probably shorter than the main story. As you approach 50K words, you are looking for a chapter break, not a conclusion. The rest of the story is for another day, month, year. What you have now works as far as it goes, but you (and your audience) recognize that the story is not complete yet.

Dono if that helps any, but that is how it sounds to me.