Wolf

I want this novel to be more than great. I want it to be the best novel I’ve ever written. The best novel you’ve ever read. I want this novel to become a monument to those who read it and a touchstone they can carry for all their days.

And so though I rushed to hit 90k words, getting there in about six weeks, I now find that I must take my time. I could rush forward, write these last 30-50k words as fast as I can, but I’m instead on a more leisurely approach.

The end will come in time.

Since I’ve resolved to devote at least a year to writing this big series, I don’t think there’s any point in forcing myself to hit 100k words in a month, which I have done before. Even the original version of this was written in two weeks, hitting 95k words.

Interestingly, the novel is now longer than that original version, and we’re still in the first chapter of that original, though I now have just dozens of chapters here at my fingertips.

I was talking to Kyle Muntz last night about this novel and how I’m in no rush to complete it, even though I’m always in a rush. But the truth is that that’s because this novel is really at least five novels.

1. Childhood (ages 8-10)
2. Thieves Guild (ages 12~16)
3. University
4. University
5. The End

Each novel will likely be around 150k words, which puts this series at potentially 750k words. Can I actually write all that in a year?

Well, I don’t see why not. I should hit 100k words tomorrow, putting me at 7 weeks into this novel. I wrote all 300k words of Song of my Mother in six months. That’s not to say it’ll be easy. It won’t be easy! But it will be fun. And that funness will determine how quickly I get this writing done.

And usually I feel this constant sense of urgency, this constant need to write more, to write faster, but I think the overwhelming size and scope allows me to sit with it. Because of the absurdity of the size, even if I write 100k words per month, I’m still six more months out. And that may as well be a century!

But I also intend for this novel to be spectacular, to be noticed, and so I must take care with how I present it to the world, yeah? Which means I must first lay the groundwork for this novel and build a runway, build an audience, built an entire grammar and dialect for speaking about the novel.

Which maybe sounds like I’m doing something complicated at the sentence level, but I am not. I want this to be plain and simple and easy to read, but touched with beauty, with poetry, with a piety for these words, these sentences, these sounds filling my mouth, shaping my teeth and tongue.