This sort of hypergraphic frenzy can be typical of me finishing a novel, though on the last two first draft projects (Green and Tourbillon) I limited my daily wordcount to guard against burnout, so I never hit this level of burst production.
Chances are very good that ordinarily I would finish The Heart of the Beast tomorrow — I have a chapter and a half to go, maybe 6,000 words — except that I owe revisions on a novella to a market, and I promised them for tomorrow. So I expect I'll put in my two hours tomorrow, then switch to the novella. But I'll be startled if I don't cap this sucker on Wednesday, unless Fred has saved up some real surprises for the ending.
I'll talk more about wordage and burst mode and how this completely different outlining regimen has affected my process when I do the post-mortem later. For now, suffice to say there's some very good reasons I've moved away from burst mode writing in general, but when it comes upon me, I don't feel compelled to fight it off with torches and pitchforks.
| Originally published at jlake.com. |