The Week in Words - 11/18/24 - 12/1/24
From the lone small seed comes ripe red fruit
Output
Data
Total: 14,176 words (22 pages [4,488] + 9,688 typed)
Words Added to “Movement and Repose”: 2,353 (full word count)
Ratio: 17
Days Spent Writing: 11/14 days (.786 WrPCT)
AWD: 1,289/day
Longest Day: 11/29/24 - 3,682 words (9 pages [1,836] + 1,846 typed)
The Still Bleepin’ Counts Award: 12/1/24 - 204 words (1 page)
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Synthesis
Over the course of the last two weeks, I took “Movement and Repose” from a roughly sketched idea to completion. That feels pretty cool to say. I took a few days off for the holiday, but spent every other day during that time writing at least a little bit while I chipped away at it.
During the first week, I wrote the first half of the story but found myself disappointed by it, disheartened, as if I was losing faith before reaching the goal. This happened because I took pause and read through what I had so far and discovered that it had problems that I had no idea how to fix. Again.
This was a pivotal turning point. I could’ve either just powered through like I planned—finish the story and put it away and figure it out later—or taken several steps back and for once figured out what gives me the arrhythmic ick in my stomach. For once—for once!—I doubled back and figured out what exactly made the whole thing feel off-kilter, what made it sound wrong.
It turned out that the biggest reason it felt rushed and confused was verb tense. I was writing the story in present tense, but every so often I’d slip into past tense. This is the inverse of what used to happen when I was first moving from screenplays to fiction. I solidified my past tense voice so much that it became auto-pilot’s choice. I was slipping into past during sentences and after dialogue, seemingly to fit the sentence to rhythm in my head. This wound up with each instance being another bar of free jazz amid the formalist minimalism I was trying to accomplish.
I was doing it to bring emphasis, to heighten the emotions—and once I figured out which verbs were the culprits and which parts needed to be reworked while ingrafting their impact, I went back to the biggidy beginning and typed everything out a second time. It slowed everything down considerably, but it really needed to be done in order to find the flow of the edits I wanted to make.
It was like returning to World 1 after defeating the Final Boss. All my sweet armor and items made the measly verbs surmountable. It took about a day of concentrated effort Once I wrapped it up, I kinda laughed to myself: all this work just to wind up at the same exact place. Except instead of sand, I stood on rock. Updating and tightening turned that confused rush into immediacy. I knew that I had a hot one on my hands and that I needed to see it through.
After we pigged out on pork and potatoes for the holiday, I sat down and pushed through the second half of the story. As with the last Avalanche cycle, I had a bunch of shit planned for the return journey, but it was clear that the trek up covered all of the new information that could be given. This intentional shortcut took me to the end of the story.
(and now a musical interlude…)
That night, I read the story in its complete first draft to Minna. It still needed work, but I was ready again to let it sit. I felt like I had to hurry back to Avalanche, that it was burning a hole in my creative pocket.
I’m grateful to Minna for encouraging me to see the story through after I read it to her. If it wasn’t for her, this little story woulda just sat and sat and sat while I used “space for perspective” as my excuse. This resulted in really the first time I’ve been able to fix and polish everything that I saw broken with a story. All this research and learning and gnosis-chasing really netted dividends in terms of matured technique and a more sorta nuts-n-bolts understanding of sentence structure and grammar—beyond the sorta sight-reading, vibes-led writing I’d been doing and toward a clear understanding of how to make what I’m doing both work and resonate—which added up to seeing fairly easily its flaw so long as I let my pride go.
I built a world and showed a slice, I poked and prodded, I cut things back, I heightened the active state I’d intended above all else.
Well, almost all else. My biggest goal with this story was to keep it simple and minimal and understated. Avalanche can be so ridiculously complicated, and doing these exercises in simplicity helped me to understand what’s absolutely necessary versus what my verbose brain-voice full of overwrought and purple passages wants to include (florid in the winter light she wanes…).
But we did it, guys. We took a story from idea to completion in about a month. Now, I can return to Avalanche renewed and refreshed. It’s been pushing on the membrane this entire time, and now I can finally release that pressure in the form of sweet new excitement for the idea. I am absolutely <hyped> to dig back into edits and into building out Maribel and Levi’s storyline, compared to the exhaustion I felt before I stepped back to write Movement and Repose.
What’s crazy is that we’re down the last two cycles before we finish Levi and Maribel’s story. So we might be behind our original estimates in terms of how long this taking but, like, damn is the writing better now. And if it takes a wee bit longer to make it better, I’ll take it. I’ve expanded this storyline, nearly doubled its word count, brought its characters to life and strung together the isolated historical events I had in the second draft.
I was overly ambitious when I aimed to finish the 3rd draft during 2024, thinking I could knock out each storyline in a quarter. But now I understand far more the task at hand: not to rush, but to see it through toward maturity and completion, no matter how long it happens to take. Fuck timelines, right guys?
"There can be no failure if there really is a Plan. Defeated you may be, but never through any fault of your own. To bow to a cosmic will is no shame. You are not a coward; you are a martyr."
Foucault's Pendulum, pg. 603. 
Input
Data
Book: All the Fun by Timothy Steele
Starting Page: 45
Ending Page: 51
Pages Read: 6
Days Read: 1
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Book: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Starting Page: 75
Ending Page: 125
Pages Read: 50
Days Read: 6
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6/14 days (.428 rPCT)
Combined Pages Read: 56
Combined Pages Per Day: 9.3
Synthesis
I spent almost all of my available reading time going through As I Lay Dying. I still like it, I don’t have much else to say. Yet!
Expect maybe something next week. I am too mentally pooped to form thoughts about something as complex as Faulkner—or even read it most of the time, which is probably why I don’t have much to say.
Alas.
I still know it’s workin’ on me in the deep-downs.
-30-
You forgot the pies. Lol