Aftermath

What a grueling experience it has been trying to write Real Life/Real Death.

Not to suggest that I'm not proud of my work, though it needs a lot more work to be good, I'm very glad to be done with it. This little story was originally just going to be an exercise in writing. The plan was to write a new chapter a week until it was done. There was no outline and no planing beyond the initial idea of doing a crime noir with real life superheroes. And I gotta say, I took a valuable lesson away from this little exorcise: I hate writing like that.

The problem I had with Real Life/Real Death was, as I was writing it, it became a chore to write an open ended story that wasn't working toward anything. Bless Stephen King for being able to write stories with no ending in mind, but I cannot do that. I need to have a clear goal in mind when I'm writing, and I didn't have one with Real Life/Real Death.

I also really struggled with the schedule, which is plainly obvious as I started this at the end of 2008 and here we are marching through 2010. I'm not too bothered by the schedule thing though. When I write, I am usually working on multiple projects at a time, so I always keep myself busy. But the fact of the matter is, as time progressed, I became less and less interested in finishing Real Life/Real Death because I felt it had no purpose other than a writing exorcise I was become more and more frustrated with.

The good news is, in last few months it's taken me to finish it, I've settled on a goal to work toward, which has reinvigorated my interest in the story. The bad news is, the new goal means I've got twenty more chapters to write to really complete the story. So, although I'm done with the exorcise, I'm far from completing this story. But the rest of the story is going to operate at my own comfortable pace, so I'm not planning on updating any more chapters on the blog. I'm certain nobody actually read any of it, which is fine. As I've always say, I write for myself. The second half of the book is also going to involve a lot of editing anyway, and that's messy. I've no intention of taking down the old posts. I'm an advocate of letting history speak for itself, so if nothing else, these series of posts will serve as a digital record of something I did from Fall '08 to Spring '10 for anybody who may be interested.

The End