I tried to finish the first chapter of the novel this weekend. I didn’t succeed. I wrote between 8-9000 words this week, and I’m going to need at least another 1000 to finish off this chapter.

The good news is that stuff keeps happening. In the novel as well as in my life. There were supposed to be three different things that occurred in this chapter. I am maybe, maybe going to finish off one of them (long-ass chapter if I do — both first and second chapters finishing at about 5000 words.)

Which means the other two plot points have been pushed to later chapters. Which is a GOOD thing. This is the thing that should have happened with the other novel and didn’t. Plus, this very, very small, one-line kind of throw away thing from the synopsis is now turning into a minor subplot that curtails nicely with the major plot and it’s so satisfying I can’t even tell you.

This is what it feels like to grow a story.

Before I could start writing the second chapter I had to write a character sketch for one of the main character’s boyfriends. (See icon.) This icon is named Caleb. I wrote the character sketch for Caleb.

Yet when I started writing the chapter, Caleb became Travis. I wrote three pages before I’d realized what I’d done.

Travis fits better with this character. He’s much more a Travis Jackson than a Caleb Jackson. This has never happened to me before. He’s been Caleb for more than a year. Suddenly he’s Travis.

And quite frankly, I find that exciting.

As for the other. . . I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to redraft all of Zydeco Queen. This growth that I’m going through, that all of my novels needs to go through, never happened, and as a result, it’s broken. Not just a little. I’ve treated this story so badly. It isn’t beyond my ability to tell it right. I just messed up, and the only way to fix it is to redo it from scratch.

I’m still debating how to do that redrafting, because I love this story too much to give up on it. Do I push and rush and give myself only a month to completely write an 80,000 word novel from scratch? I’ve already written it once, even if I’m not using any of it, so I won’t have to spend time thinking of stuff. Just, well, new stuff.

Do I do the rewrite as part of the Clarion West Write-a-thon? That will give me 6 weeks, instead of merely 4. I’d planned on writing a new short story every week, or else writing another short novel (60,000 words.)

Do I just say fuck it, and give myself a full three months? Like I do other novels?

My goal for the year was to finish three novels, as well as at least half a dozen short stories. I’m wondering now if that was overly ambitious, given how I’ve messed up this novel. And how far behind I already am on this one. . .

It isn’t something I need to decide tonight though. Tonight I am celebrating that I haven’t forgotten how to tell a story, that I can still dip into those lovely currents and eddies, and yet at the same time I think I’m maintaining a nice tension.

Life is good.