I finished my novel this weekend. Wrote the final chapter, the intense fight scene, the anti-climactic ending…which means I failed to write a short story like I promised someone I would. I need to go apologize to her this morning 🙁

However, I acheived that goal. I’m not happy with the ending yet. I mean, it ends the way I want it to, but it’s too sparse. It needs to be fleshed out, filled in, made whole. Right now it’s more of a skelatal structure than anything. I sent it to my one non-writer-reader anyway.

As I neared the end of the story – the new end that I created last week – I ended up putting in a lot of exposition. On a rational level, it belongs there. Probably. But on an emotional level, I abohore this level of having explain things. Like…Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban levels of exposition. Maybe. So by the time I reached the final scenes, I was tired of it. I wrote them all with everything implied (like way too much of everything. I don’t think I explained anything except for a very brief gloss-over of what I did with Loki.

And I will have to fix it. But for now, I’m on my next pass through in edits. My awesomeness frosted crit partners are starting to give me feedback about the beginning of the book, and I’m seeing where I need to flesh things out. Character development, plot points, all that good stuff.

But, even though I only have a week left to polish it, I’m walking away for the day. I’ve been through it three times in the last three weeks, and I need to be fresh before I look at it again. So today…I will write other things instead. The pitch maybe. And a short story. And maybe some long past due critiques.

And I will force myself to crunch for this deadline like I never do. Hopefully. And…then take a break and go all adult contemporary instead.

What are you up to this week?