Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Perfect Storm and The End

I wrote like a madwoman yesterday and finished Immortal, Beloved!!! Yay!!! I woke up, deciding immediately that it was going to be a PJ, coffee, writing day (those are now OFFICIALLY my favorite kind) and buckled down.

Do you remember the movie The Perfect Storm? Let me jog your memory:



What'd you say? Those two hunky celebs weren't supposed to be the focus of the movie? Huh.

In the movie (based on real events), Hunk 1 and Hunk 2 were part of a crew of swordfishermen fishing off the Grand Banks. Their fishing boat, The Andrea Gail, despite countless warnings, headed straight into The Perfect Storm (a culmination of a few monster Atlantic storms crashing into one another) and sank.

How does this fit in with my writing day yesterday? Glad you asked.

Remember this scene?



The Andrea Gail was fighting to get out of the storm. The fishermen could see the sunrise. Just on the other side of that ginormous wave was their freedom. They could almost reach it...almost...tension was at its peak. And then they tumbled down the wall of water and were never seen again.

Okay, so I'm being overdramatic. But I was fighting to finish Immortal's first draft. Although this book is my absolute favorite--the best I've written to date--it's given me pains along the way. The beginning was torture. I wrote draft after draft. The middle was action-packed and went much more smoothly. But this ending. Ugh. Pain. I wrote 6k in a few hours yesterday morning. Stepped away from the computer for a bit. Came back. Deleted 2k of those words. I reached the black moment of my story, wrote through it, realized I was a few paragraphs from the end...and decided it wasn't good enough. It didn't grab me like it should've. So I tumbled back down the wall of words.

After I put the kids to bed last night I sat down again, determined to finish this book. I wrote a few more hours, twisted things in a different direction, saw the new day dawning (in my book of course), and FINISHED!

It's raw. It needs to be edited A LOT. Especially since I wrote another 2k in a flurry after hours. (And the stuff I write in the middle of the night is not good. Ever.)

But it's done. I made it out alive. (Albeit tired and in serious need of coffee and down time reading other genres.)

The [glorious and wonderful and all things shiny and sparkly] End.

5 comments:

Aubree said...

ooh congrats! what a satisfying feeling :)

Kristin Miller said...

Thanks! I have TONS of editing to do, but the first draft is down and that feels like the biggest hurdle of all. :)

Murees Dupè said...

Hi, I am new to your blog, but I just wanted to say congratulations with the finishing of your first draft and that I enjoy your blog posts a lot.

Best of luck.

Kristin Miller said...

Thanks Murees! Always great to "meet" another writer!

Murees Dupè said...

Thank you for following my blog. I really appreciate it.

Have a great day.