The Secret "Stay Awhile"

Let me preface this post with the fact that I'm a little bit ridiculous and can sometimes be taken with ridiculous notions.

So.

I tend to write a lot in a single stretch. I'm not saying it is all gold -- not at all -- which means I'm a big cut-stuff-outer, too.

The most I've written in a single stretch was for a scene that will appear in "Fairwil," the book after the book I'm working on now. I woke up around 11 p.m. one night, went to my computer, wrote 7,000 words, and went to bed around dawn. Believe me, A LOT of those words have had to go, or have been changed, so I don't want this to seem like chest-puffery. It was merely the "get it down on paper" exercise.

More, in short, isn't better. So my policy is this: I write long and I write a lot but I try, in the end, to write tight. Writing tight is key, for me.

This is all to say that there's been a whole lot cut out of "Stay Awhile." In fact, I realized I could probably build an alternate book out of what I've edited out. I wrote about 15,000 words in June that I realized, with a sad heart, had to go.

I'm okay with this; I think the various paths I've wandered down with the characters have allowed me to become better acquainted with them. When I started writing "Wilfair" I knew who Monty and Fair and everyone would be, of course, but it was a bit like hearing about someone you're about to meet for the first time before you've actually met. You've got a catalog of their qualities and traits but you don't yet know how it feels to be with them.

But my thinking about the characters clicked over to feeling about the characters early on in "Wilfair," about the time Fair first walks over to the motel.

Click.

And then I felt them.

I hope you do, too. I feel them first and I think them second, when I write, which seems incredibly counter intuitive, but I actually think that's how we operate as people, in real life. We're always sensing a person's unsaid subtext and what they want and what they need before we take what they're doing or saying on the surface at face value.

And the feeling part makes it very tempting to wander off with Gomery and Prior and Sutton on side adventures and conversations that don't necessarily serve the main engine of the book's thrust and forward motion. I constantly have to watch myself on this. I have many faults, but a love of the scenic route is a big one.

This is all to say that that I have all of this extra stuff, a lot of character stuff, that I may publish on another blog down the road, when I'm taking a brief break between "Stay Awhile" and "Fairwil." I can't decide if this is sheer silliness, or if it might confuse things happening in the books, or if it would complement this blog at all. I'll think on that.

I've secured the blog name, though, in anticipation of maybe trying this, if I have time. It's a name or a phrase or wording from the books. It's up now, it doesn't have anything on it, and it is a .blogspot.com. Can you guess what word/words come before that? If you do, I'll post your name with some sparkles and stars.

Thanks, as always, for reading. And thanks for your patience with my musings!