When the story goes to heart

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Recent Cornflower block finish; at least something's being completed.

My latest novel is up to 50K. Technically that's a strong halfway point, but I need to confess for the plot I previously imagined I should be farther ahead in the story than where I am. That rarely happens, and I'm realizing this tale is doing its own thing regardless of my initial considerations.

Well okay then novel; you be you and I'll take a couple of days off while family visits! Ahem....

I think, within this series, despite it being a collection of kinda-standaloneish-books, I need to allow that it's more like The Hawk. Meaning it's one LONG book broken into these bite-sized hunks, and maybe this one might be the largest. I won't speculate HOW big Book 4 will become, as I don't want to paint myself into an inescapable corner or limit the story, which is nicely meandering as two characters fall in love. Yet the timeline I'd assumed has stretched itself, or shrunk itself depending on one's perspective, to a point where this morning while relatives snooze, here I am blathering on about how this story, like many of my novels, has taken on a brain and heart of its own. Well okay, huh. It happens, but not quite this long and drawn out-like!

Except that The Hawk is LONG, dude! That story took years to complete, in an off-and-on-again manner, chapters accumulating like raindrops we've been graced to watch seep into the ground. We're above one hundred percent of normal precipitation in Humboldt County, the first time since our move here that has happened so early in the year! This novel is being just as aggressive, hmmm. Not aggressive but excited, insistent, ambitious. Yes, it's ambitious like the winter rainfall, the word count going PLOOP PLOOP PLOOP in a way that makes me happy, much like the soggy weather, because 1) Rain is so necessary and 2) I didn't assume I could write with such abandon at, my, uh, age.

LOL!

Now there's writing with abandon merely for the sake of getting one's fictional ya-ya's out. Then there's crafting a worthy tale that might be longer than the previous installment in the series. I won't limit the story for the sake of staying under a prescribed word-count, yet I don't want a 150K bloated whale amid leaner tales. I desire a marvelous novel with just the right amount of chapters for that particular story, and if it has the heart to justify more than the usual length, okay! I want to keep an open mind, not wishing to throttle what has exploded, this is only the first draft. But I'm also mindful that while sagas are great, having one in the mid-section of a series might be overkill.

Or maybe it will be magnificent! All I can do is keep writing, after family is gone, allowing the characters and the muse to mesh in a manner I obviously couldn't predict. Such is the beauty of creativity, the awareness of spontaneity's importance within the process. Goodness knows some of my most clever prose and plotting were borne of seat-of-my-pants noveling, and maybe here such marvelous mayhem strikes again. Remember, it's November, National Novel Writing Month afoot. Let those first drafts go where they will. Reigning them in is another month's journey.

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