I'm pushing 40K as of last night, but do I feel good about it? The words run like spilled punch at the end of a drunken orgy, and the characters are just as wooden and stoned. There's a lot of activity, observations, and events, scurrying back and forth between point A, B, and C. Characters pop in and out like Whack-a-Mole, and gobble words like Hungry Hippos. But where's the depth, the meaningful look, the lingering touch? What about the trailing water off the end of a leaf, the damp, fertile earth between the toes, and the last ray of sunlight under a seagull's wing?
So I race onward and slam my story together with violence, blood, and endless perils. Events on a page of a history book, a filled in character sketch, connect the dots of the plot points, pinch points, and climaxes. But it is all dead. Dead words. Mechanical words to be replaced and refined organically, as a seed germinates, and the sprout pokes its downy head from the warm, moist soil and grows in the year to come.
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