The Run For The Credits
I’m closing in on the end of the Wild Card Interstitial story, and the desperate lunge for the credits or The End has begun. I find that as I approach the end of a book or script or story I become more and more frenzied. Maybe because every choice has been made, all the threads have been gathered and braided and now it just playing it out. Last night I wanted to jot down just one more line of dialogue and I ended up writing until 12:30 am. I don’t normally write well at night. I’m a morning person.
Which during the hot summer months puts my job in direct conflict with my hobby. I need to ride the horse early, and that’s when I do my best writing. I just need to muddle through the next two months and it will start to cool off.
Do other people find this to be the case? Or do some writers slow down because it’s all going to be over soon and you’ll be saying farewell to the people who have inhabited your life and your head for a year or more?
Melinda
July 1st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Are you at liberty to say who the star is of the interstitial? (I’m guessing no, but thought I’d ask. Two of the most tantalizing loose ends from the original run have to do with Tachyon — his dormant virus and his open-ended contract with the Network. I’m hoping the new trilogy addresses these, but I imagine I’ll just have to wait to find out, huh?)
July 1st, 2007 at 10:30 pm
The open-ended contract with the Network is the only thing that would tempt me to write another Tachyon story. Like the Turtle, Tach has reached a logical resting point for his story. He’s done his journey, learned his lessons, and there really isn’t anything more to say. Also, George and I decided to make the mental powers really, really rare in the Wild Cards universe. They are just too powerful, make it virtually impossible to plot a mystery or you have to come up with horseshit explanations about why the telepath doesn’t know that so and so is a killer.
The interstitial in the first book is written by Daniel Abraham and features a new character –Jonathan Hive aka Bugsy. My interstitial features my new character Noel Matthews aka Double Helix. So, I guess it really doesn’t give away anything because these are brand new players in our little sandbox. I think you’re going to love Bugsy. I won’t presume to say you’ll like Noel. I’ll just say I’ve been having a blast writing these sections.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:17 am
Ah yes, that all makes sense. I can see where Tachyon’s journey came full circle and ended in your solo novel. On a related note about the “mental powers” thing, I must say I always liked the way you rendered Tachyon’s telepathy in prose. It’s a great thing about the W.C. books in general – the way you and the other authors took these extraordinary concepts that are usually rendered in a visual medium (comic books) and evoked them through prose alone. That’s always struck me as a particularly difficult thing to do. (It’s why I’m positive I’ll never be a fantasy writer – I could never do it.) If the Jonathan Hive story currently available on GRRM’s website is an indication, it seems as if y’all are only getting more wild, conceptually. I look forward to seeing more!
July 2nd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I find that it’s my tendency to speed up as I approach the end of a novel — to mix metaphors (and cliches), I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I’m running downhill. I usually have to deliberately slow down (and deliberately rewrite heavily there…)
July 4th, 2007 at 10:51 am
I speed up as I approach the finish, particularly of a long work. All of the hard work is done, all my ducks are in a row, and all I have to do is spring to the finish. (Steve isn’t the only one who can mix metaphoric cliches.)
It’s always the middle part that’s hard. I always know where I’m beginning, I always know what I want from the end, but getting from one to the other is always difficult.
July 6th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
I speed up too. I can’t help myself; I wake up dreaming about the book and stumble into the office with my fingers twitching.