{"id":1069,"date":"2012-01-16T23:35:26","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T03:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2012-01-16T23:35:49","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T03:35:49","slug":"12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/?p=1069","title":{"rendered":"12-in-12"},"content":{"rendered":"

II. The Agony of The End<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain euphoric sensation that seeps through you when you finish a tale. That moment you write The End, you become emotional soup. There\u2019s relief upon getting that far. There\u2019s excitement, and also anxiety. There\u2019s almost always the certainty that it could be better, and sometimes doubt as to whether it\u2019s good enough. (Hint: it\u2019s probably not; now\u2019s also when you start to feel overwhelmed at the massive revisions ahead.) There\u2019s sorrow. Exhaustion. Elation.<\/p>\n

You lean back in your chair and sigh. You call someone, whoever it is you usually call, your spouse or lover or friend or rival, just to tell them the news. \u201cI\u2019m done.\u201d \u201cReally? Congratulations!\u201d Like you\u2019re really, actually done–because you\u2019re not–like you\u2019ve given birth to something–because you haven\u2019t. But you\u2019ve completed the first draft, and that is most definitely an accomplishment. Celebrate. You\u2019ve earned it.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I completed the first draft of the first novella of this 12-in-12. I wrote END right there, in the place where it belongs. I sat back, I sighed, I made that phone call. Then I asked myself, \u201cWhat now?\u201d<\/p>\n

I always ask that. Do I send the manuscript to a First Reader? Print it and attack with the blue pen right away? Put it aside for a month or two and take it up again with fresh eyes? It\u2019s a powerful question, and there are plenty of good answers. And maybe none of them are wrong; every story will have its own perfect next step. But now, completing the first of twelve, the question has another urgent layer: What now?<\/em> How do I start the second novella immediately upon completing the first?<\/p>\n

(In case you\u2019re interested: the first novella is awaiting a title, though it was briefly known as The Queen in Winter<\/em> and, also briefly, In The North Country<\/em>; it\u2019s a noir-tinged fantasy set in motion by memories of upstate New York, Route 9, and a quiet unassuming motel set just off the road; it\u2019s also about a circus, and cats, and poetry; and it\u2019s a story for fathers and daughters, despite that I\u2019m neither a daughter nor a father.)<\/p>\n

I grabbed the bits and pieces of two novellas I know I\u2019ll be working on this year, Kings <\/em>and Ghosts<\/em>, and sent out a search party to find the notes, character sheets, and bible. (Yes, these are Midnight stories, so there\u2019s much known and unknown about that city, and I\u2019ve got to keep all its details straight.) But I also know I need a day to decompress. It sounds awful. It feels awful. It, in fact, is<\/u> awful. But I need one day to clear my head before I dive into the second novella.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m off to a good start. The first novella took less than half a month. It fell a little short of the twenty-five thousand word goal, but that\u2019s okay. Some will be shorter, some will be longer. I\u2019m also allowing my mind to process other thoughts and gestate fledgling ideas. Because that\u2019s how it\u2019s done. My mind is a mad scientist\u2019s lab, complete with attics, turrets, basements, cellars, secret rooms, and dancing girls. There are clouded mason jars hiding things better left hidden, and some of those jars have been in here since childhood. There\u2019s a massive kitchen with pots of stew bubbling along nicely, sauces that are nearly ready or too thin or in serious need of some reducing. There\u2019s a living room where I keep the various versions of me, past, present, non-existent, and unimagined. We argue philosophy and politics and mathematical theories.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m wandering this labyrinthine chateau, with its pitfalls and poisons and flowers and, like I said, dancing girls, and tomorrow I\u2019ll emerge with the first few words of the second 12-in-12 novella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

II. The Agony of The End There\u2019s a certain euphoric sensation that seeps through you when you finish a tale. That moment you write The […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkfluidity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}