No, I’m not referring to Avengers.
I am finally in the last episode of Fletcher & Cooper. I have a very rough, very vague idea of how things are going to go down, but just as with all my other novels I honestly have no idea how it’s all going to shake out. Even when I write with an ending in mind first, I never know the route that it will eventually take.
Finishing a novel to me honestly feels a little bit like binging a TV show and getting into that final stretch of the final season. Everything’s starting to wrap up, but you don’t know how it’s going to end and whether it will be satisfying or not, and you’re excited to see how everything turns out but you also don’t want it to be over. That’s definitely the Big Mood of both the novel and this last week of Camp NaNo: I don’t want it to be over.
I love my swashbuckling babies. I also love having a novel on the go, that I can dip into whenever I want. But Space Crazies is coming home soon and I’ve got a career to continue trying to get off the ground and I just can’t keep dragging around my little weird genres-in-a-blender novel while I’ve got other work to do. It’s too tempting. I’ve got to get it done.
And that makes me sad for the secondary reason that, likely, for the next six+ months–if not well into next year–I will be only editing. Maybe I will write a short story here and there but I won’t be starting any new novels until I clear out this bottleneck. Space Crazies, Embers, Ignition, and now Fletcher & Cooper all need extensive revisions. (Not to mention taking yet another a long hard look at Blackout Odyssey.) That’s a lot of work ahead of me.
I’ve already decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year for the first time since I’ve started. I mean, I might drag my editing ass out to the meet-ups, but I won’t be trying to write. That hurts, and I haven’t yet made my peace with that decision on an emotional level, but I know it’s the right thing to do work-wise. I gotta clear out this backlog and get these already finished novels out into the world before I start any one of the shiny new ideas I have kicking around.
And that brings me back around to F&C and its resolution. Even if the ending is stupid, even if it’s literal garbage and turns out it was all a hologram program Riker and Troy were running, or that Fletcher was an angel and Cooper is a robot and something-something Gaius motherfucking Balter cues up a sequence of dancing Asimos and roombas, I will get it done.
So, yeah. Hello, last episode. Time has come to say goodbye.
…but first of course I have to write the dang thing. So I’m aiming for both Thursday AND Friday this week to be 5K days. I have a redbull in my fridge, I’ve cancelled all my social engagements (well, I might go see Spiderman in the evening on Thursday) and I am ready to rock and/or roll. Come find me on Twitter if you want to do either a writing sprint or just enjoy my GIF-laden threads, and we’ll see how it goes. Last day of Camp NaNo is Tuesday anyway, so expect an emotional blag post next week either way. 😉
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