It is day 23 of 30.

I HAVE WRITTEN 47,803 WORDS… ONLY THREE THOU TO GO FOR THE BIG 50,000…

AND THERE WILL BE ABOUT 10-15 THOUSAND MORE BEFORE THIS STORY GETS TO AN ENDING OF SOME SORT.

However. I will NOT have a fully publishable book at the end of this month-long marathon. No. Not at all!

At this point it is a bunch of hacked together scenes, moments, characters, dialogues, descriptions, and events lacking much cohesive plot. There are lots of “holes” to fill in at some later date.

And I’m bored to death with it!

Why did I choose to work on “A Roaring Deep Within”? Because it was there, already started and with characters, places, historical time period that interests me, and some notes filled into the plot line for developing. That seemed like the right one to go with for now, even though I was not crazy about any of my characters or very excited about the story itself.

However, along the way this month I have indeed discovered some gems to throw into the mix and spark up the action.

I surprised myself with several new twists and turns that took the tale in unexpected directions and gave it some new life; I beefed up the Wicked Queen and even gave her some sympathetic qualities; likewise, the Good Priestess gained some faults; I took some chances with amped up  danger to my protagonist; beefed up some action scenes to be more dynamic; put in some real heart-wrenching tragedy__ (I even killed a baby!) And I am planning to knock off another character to give the tale some extra punch and emotional sting.

I’ve heightened the fantasy  with some surreal elements; and I have introduced a couple of new characters who add dimension to the protagonist’s challenges. Moreover, I have given the sex scenes more erotic zing despite my reservations on such writing; I added deeper mystery to the protagonist’s quest and gave her a more complicated persona with some brilliant wisdom mixed with maddeningly naive qualities; there is more action and dangerous, palpably gut-wrenching episodes; and I am getting some inklings of a good ending.

All in all, I can say this month-long writing challenge is working for me. I am more enthusiastic about this story and I am even getting quite attached to several of my characters. I’m also really pissed off at one, which is a good sign he is more annoyingly real! Even the sub-plots are becoming exciting.

There is a Novel in there somewhere!!!

Now I only have to gather the energy at some not too distant date to return to the thing, organize it, fill in the holes, fill out the details, polish it, edit it, and send it off for a critique before publishing…only about another year-long project!

All in all I can say this has been a worth-while exercise for me. Writing  seems like a futile task at times… but I have learned the thrill in completing a story, and seeing it published is (probably) worth the struggle… and the moments of pure boredom.