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The Perfectionists

Author's Commentary (Part II)

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So... I have to concede at this point. I'm throwing in the towel. Waving the white flag. Tapping out. I've fallen too far behind, and there's no way on I'm catching up by the end of November. Not even if I took the rest of the month off and chained myself to my desk again.

And here I could list all of the reasons why, but suffice it to say that life is chock full of all kinds of things, and that some of these things take precedence, of necessity, over the writing of a novel.

So I'm grateful that @freewritehouse doesn't actually employ goons to handle egregious derelictions of duty such as this (@felt.buzz and @mariannewest).

They... don't. Right?

But goons or no goons, that's kind of the sad part. That I'm not going to finish the novel this month, or even reach the 50,000 word goal. As of right now I've only written 26,087 words. A little over halfway. Fifteen chapters, with a sixteenth arriving soon, most likely tomorrow.

Then again, 26,087 words is waaaaaay more than I've ever written in one month before! And the month's not even over. So while I'm disappointed that I didn't reach the goal, I'm still kind of amazed that I wrote so much. And though word count is a worthy benchmark, and one I definitely wanted to reach, it's really only the contest goal. My personal goal, the reason I decided to take part in #NaNoWriMo in the first place, was to finish it. To not only write a novel length story, but to come up with a satisfactory ending for it. Because endings (as I explained in my first few NaNo posts) have been my Achilles' heel, at least when it comes to longer works of fiction, such as the four episodic series I've started and (so far) left unfinished on Steemit: The Strangeling, Old Scratch, Poison, and Maintenance.

So in terms of my personal goal, I'm very happy to report that @freewritehouse's #NaNoWriMo contest has been a resounding success! Not only did I write a first chapter completely off the top of my head, and reverse-engineer a general plot outline for a full length novel from there, but I came up with an ending for it that I actually think I might like.

To make it even more complex, the ending I have in mind is really multiple endings, as there are five or six different sets of characters and scenarios that are interwoven in The Perfectionists, and connected in ways that are not yet evident, but will begin to come into focus within the next few chapters.

This took time, and perseverance. I spent a good two-three weeks agonizing over the novel's ending (and large parts of its middle as well), and hoping that the characters would unfold the story to me over the course of those weeks. And they did. There are still many missing pieces, but the entire skeleton is standing there now, staring at me with its empty eye sockets, and being fleshed out, right before my eyes, every time I sit down to write another installment.

On a side note, I'm currently working on the ending for one of @blockurator's exquisite corpse contests (latest entry here: https://steemit.com/fiction/@bennettitalia/exquisite-corpse-get-off-my-farm-punk-chapter-8b), and wholeheartedly enjoying trying to tie up as many of the loose ends as possible. I was fortuitously put at the end of the exquisite corpse chain, giving me yet another chance, in the month of November, to find a good ending for a complicated story.

So I'm going to continue to work on my NaNo novel until I reach the ending I've got planned. My new goal is to write one or two chapters a week until it's done. I'm curious to see how things develop and change in the process, and if the ending is even what I think it is by the time my characters and I get there.

I want to send a huge thank you to @mariannewest, @freewritehouse, and all the #novmadfans and #freewritemadness #NaNoWriMo writers. And especially to @whatisnew (for whom I find myself throwing feline references into the chapters, because I know she loves them) and @wonderwop, who have been reading and commenting on every single one of my posts. Thank you SO much you two! You have no idea how much your feedback, and simply your presence, has meant to me. I truly could not have gotten this far without you.

I'm excited about The Perfectionists. I think that in the end, even if it turns out to be a mess, it's going to be an interesting mess. As a writer I feel a lot more confident, a lot freer and a lot less scared of fucking up, having thrown myself off of this metaphorical cliff and lived to tell the tale.

Sometimes the goal is the attempt.

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©2018 Bennett Italia, all rights reserved.

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