Here's a quick timeline of the latest work-in-progress:

Since subsequent drafts have yet to go beyond the first five chapters or so, I still feel like I really haven't completed a full second draft yet. And even this fourth "draft" has gone through multiple rewrites. I'll read through it one day and think, "Hey, this isn't bad." But then I'll read through it the next day and think, "This is complete crap. No one would want to read this."

And even today, just when I figured I had it all figured out and was ready to move on, it hit me again: this sucks. So I embarked on the twelfth revision of the fourth draft and I'm still only on Chapter 3.

The irony is I know what I'm supposed to do but I just can't seem to do it. I'm starting to feel that my natural writing style is more suitable for history books than gripping novels. But having invested 336 hours into this project, I'm not ready to give up yet. All I have to do is turn twenty-seven "tell" passages into "show" passages, and I'll be sitting on a pile of gold.

So a month ago I claimed I was back at it again, but feared for the future of my progress, since the easy part was over and I was swimming into some uncharted waters. I called that one! Things did pretty much grind to a halt after that. Fortunately, that ended today when I think I got this storyline properly reworked. I struggled and struggled with the weak ending the first draft produced but today, like a bolt out of the blue, it just came together.

Still lots of work to do, mostly ironing out a few of the middle details. But this is the closest this has felt in a long time, and I'm going to take that as a good sign.

Shortly after the derailment post, I was fortunately able to pick things up again. I've now made it through seven chapters of the second draft, which is currently up around twenty-five thousand words. I also did something else I've never done before: I divided each chapter into its own document and I think I like working like this. It's easier to manage than one big file, especially when it comes to versioning.

Of course, I'm about to derail myself again. Not due to outside influences but because the easy part of the story is now behind me. This is where things start to get a bit thick and there's going to be far more rewriting from this point forward.

Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Hard to believe that was two weeks ago already. I was fired up for another solid run but got immediately derailed by work and life and all the in-betweens. I made it about halfway through the rewrite of the second chapter, and that's where things stopped. Hopefully I'll be back at it soon. I'm just glad this isn't November, because then it'd just be really sad.

After a nearly three month hiatus, I began the second draft of The Spark last night. Threw out nearly the entire first chapter (more like a prologue) and I'm now coming at it from a completely different angle. And, as is my wont between drafts, I changed the name of the main character. I don't know why I do that. Why can't I simply: 1) pick the right character name to begin with, or 2) learn to like it? I mean, it's just a name, right?

I think it really says something about the value we place on names. For me, it's not until I put it into use for a couple hundred pages that I can know whether it fits or not.

Anyway, it feels good to get back on the horse. I'm hopeful this keeps going.

Since my last post, I wrapped up the first draft of The Spark.

And that's it.

I know, I know. I was so fired up about it. I kicked off NaNo by writing thirty-one thousand words in about eight days: a personal record. But then I hit that same point I hit after every Big Push, something I call the Big Letdown. That's when you set down the proverbial pen, read what you just wrote, and let out a long, theatrical sigh.

You knew it was bad while you were writing it. You just didn't think it'd be this bad.

But that's normal. Nearly every writer goes through that. (And believe me, I personally know nearly every writer. I see them every week at the meeting.) Unfortunately, fixing a manuscript takes work, and I hate work. So, my work has been sitting on the counter like a batch of cookies cooling, except that I haven't gone back to the manuscript as often as I would have gone back to the cookies.

It's an important time, though, this cooling period. You get to come back to it later, read it, and think, "Who the hell wrote this?"

I'm looking forward to that.

One thing I'll miss, now that Phase One is complete, is the rapid word count gains I saw last week. I never thought I could sustain a burst like that, but I owe it all to my detailed synopsis. One major difference between plotting and pantsing (at least for me) is the former allows me to really crank out words as I go from bullet point to bullet point.

Exhibit A: Here is a post from the NaNo forum containing the Austin Area stats as of Sunday:

Hey everybody! We have some numbers for the first week -ish. These numbers were accurate as of Sunday morning around 8 am.

We have 1,497 people homed in Austin and 827 have entered word count. Our total regional word count is 6,016,832. The average word count of folks who are writing is 7,561. With yesterday's end of day goal at 11,669, there were 191 on target - but actually, there are more because the numbers are from the beginning of day and the target was end-of-day. Anyhoo, we have two winners already!

Here's a list of the top dozen wordiest Austin authors so far:

• Caeraerie : 101,307
• MerryTwoTwo : 72,852
• dalartha : 38,109
• rianlrt : 35,153
• theresajmc : 33,547
• hillsc : 31,717
• Peska : 28,084
• MTeson : 27,815
• marysipe : 27,284
• Tathry : 25,742
• OrangeTangoDoble : 25,377
• Rabidtreeweasel : 25,059

Check me out there in sixth place. Of course, that's as good as it's going to get. I'm essentially dropping out of NaNo for now (since the spirit of NaNo is to simply crank, crank, crank, and that phase is behind me now).

It will be sad watching everyone catch up and eventually soar past me. But that's okay. I was never in it for the win this year. It was simply an excuse to get a 33k word burst in one week and prepare me for the slow and difficult part.

It was the end of NaNoWriMo Day 8, and I somehow found myself writing last sentences of the first draft. It felt a little strange, actually, like, "is this really happening?" But as I stared at it I thought, "Well, yes, I think it is."

But something about it didn't quite feel right either. There was no, "Wow, that felt good," moment. Or, "Man, I'm so awesome! Check me out." As I searched for the source of these feelings of discontent, I found it right in front of me: this draft.

It wasn't like anything I'd ever tried before (not that I've tried this that many times). As I thought about it, I slowly realized it's not so much a first draft as it is a highly detailed, sixty-two thousand word synopsis.

In the movie Finding Forrester, Jamal and Forrester sit down at back-to-back typewriters and this scene takes place.

Jamal: What are you doing?

Forrester: I'm writing. Like you'll be, when you start punching those keys.

A moment passes. Jamal has not begun typing.

Forrester: Is there a problem?

Jamal: No. I'm just thinking.

Forrester: No thinking. That comes later. You write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is to write. Not to think.

I really liked this scene because I remember thinking how spot-on it was. It's exactly the path I was following a year ago: just write, write, write and let it flow the first time around. Don't think about it. Don't worry about. This is the phase where what happens to your head in the process is more important than the words that hit the paper.

But it also got me nowhere. And this time around, without even a firm conscious decision to do so, I changed tactics. I used nothing but my head this time. When I followed heart, I ended up with one hundred and twenty three thousand meandering words that no one---not even me---would ever want to read. I made valiant attempts to fix it with my head on subsequent passes, but my heart had apparently taken that story to unrecoverable places.

Reboot.

This time I decided to nail the plot. I had to make sure, first and foremost, that the framework was solid. If I wrote the first draft with my head, I could then use my heart on later passes to really flesh it out, without the worry that I'd end up with all frilly words and no backbone.

And that's why this draft is just that: a backbone. It has lots of, "add something here" or "don't forget to stick this there". It's full of placeholders where I knew story needed to go but those words weren't necessary at the time to keep things going. It' as if I were building a skeleton. As I work my way down the backbone I might say, "Arm goes here . . . leg goes there," without the bother of wasting time building the perfect limbs. Yet limbs the body needs. I can't leave it with nothing but a backbone.

And that's why I got to the end of this "draft" feeling nothing but, "meh." Because it really does feel like only half of a traditional manuscript.

But it is a major milestone, and I'll take it. For the first time in my life I feel like I have a solid, complete, end-to-end story with some great potential---and that's saying a lot. Even with "half a manuscript," my job is really ninety percent done.

Now I just have to finish the other ninety percent.