Today’s gonna end up being an editing day; it’s going to have to be.  I spent all day Monday on the Baen entry (which, incidentally, I think I’m really proud of, and thanks very much to Ronovan, Kraftycatcreations, L. S. Engler, shrtstry, and ebthompson93, all of whom provided some suggestions and advice on short notice) and didn’t get anything remotely useful done yesterday, so right now I’m really behind on word count and about to get much worse.  

Here’s the thing, though:  at some point when I wasn’t looking this story got a lot bigger than I think I originally wanted it to.  To continue the Star Wars metaphor that’s loosely tied the whole series together I’ve found myself writing Return of the Jedi when what I wanted was the first half or so of A New Hope, maybe ending when they escape the Death Star.  I’m not blowing up the damn Death Star yet.  I don’t even think these guys are the guys who take that job.

(No, that’s not a hint that I’m planning on killing somebody.  I don’t even know who my Obi-Wan Kenobi is right now.)

I kept the Benevolence in deep background in the novella.  (Which you should buy and read, dammit.)  There’s no way to keep that going in a novel-length manuscript; the books are called The Benevolence Archives for a reason and the Benevolence needs to be a part of the novel.  But I seem to have tossed myself into a place where I’m going from these guys being this looming threat in the background straight into my heroes standing alone against the might of the evil empire territory and that’s really not where I wanted this story to go, so I need to either figure out a way to roll with it or pull the entire thing back and reconceptualize a little bit.

(I keep reminding myself first drafts are allowed to suck.)

Also, my habit of writing by planting myself in front of a computer and just, y’know, going is kicking me in the ass here.  I’ve already introduced at least one twist and possibly two that I have absolutely no idea what to do with and I think before I proceed much further I probably need to know what’s actually going on with them.  The target length for the manuscript is 75000 words; I’ll be around 20000 by the end of the day which is just over a quarter of the length, which means that the central conflict really ought to be clear by this point and I feel like it’s probably not.

So, yeah: today is going to be spent editing, and at the drawing board, scribbling ideas and making myself plan.  I like what I’ve got, don’t get me wrong; I just need to pound it into more of a shape before I start hanging other things on it.

Or something.  I’m not good with metalworking metaphors.