After two weeks of non-stop work, putting down nearly 15K words to the page, I had a feeling the steam in my engine was about to dissipate. I struggled for much of the week to show up at my desk. Between my birthday and the cold front blowing in, all I wanted to do was curl under the covers and sleep my days away. It was simply too cozy, to warm, beneath those blankets to get moving any earlier than 8:00 AM, which often set me up for a strange day.

Still.

I showed up at odd times, I put fingers to keyboard, and I struggled through the end of one chapter. BY the time I made it to the next, I had finally found my groove, had entered that state of flow I’d been missing at the start of the week. And I plan on keeping the momentum into next.

Where I Started

At the end of last week, I’d written a total of 7,594 words and finished Chapter 26 + half of Chapter 27 (another chapter that never seemed to end). I added words to my overall word count goal, totaling 92,211 words. I know, I know, this manuscript is HUGE. But stay with me, because a lot of exciting things happened this week that I can’t wait to share with you.

My Goals for the Week

Show up.

That’s it. That was my primary goal for the entire week. Simply, show up, even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.

I already knew heading into the week that it would be a challenging one. I don’t know how, something rang true, deep in my bones, that this would be the case. So I dropped all pretense of goals and kept it simple.

I’m so glad I did.

That goal remained an anchor point when everything started to feel overwhelming, when my current overall word count seemed to be spiraling out of control, with no end in sight.

How the Week Went

Monday morning, bright and early. The first thing I wrote inside the journal I use to take note of how each writing session went read: Really resisting writing today. Def. think maybe I overdid it last week and pushed way past my baseline & it’s come back to bite me. Yeah. Not a great start. I wound up writing for 30 full minutes and walked away with 791 words, but hey, that’s better than zero words.

Which brings me directly to Tuesday. My birthday. I knew I’d take this day off entirely, but still, words found me that morning, as soon as I woke up. I typed them quickly into the notes app of my phone then shut it off for the rest of the day. Since they never made it to the page, I didn’t “count” those words at all, so I ended the day at 0 words.

The overwhelm regarding the size of my book was really beginning to hit me (again) by Wednesday. I’d spent the evening before looking up estimated word counts of all my favorite books that were 500+ pages. None of them broke 150K words which is my current end goal for this manuscript. But looking at where I’m at vs how much story is left to tell, I know, have always known, that I was going to blow wayyyyy past that goal.

Still.

I showed up, I wrote. I set a timer for 10 minutes, just to get the ball rolling, just to put words on the page. Any words. They didn’t have to be good words. I wound up writing past my ten minute timer and coming back to write after dinner (something I rarely ever do). Somehow, 1,600 words made their way into the story. I literally have zero idea how, except that I showed up.

Thursday, I was stills struggling to get through the end of chapter 27. It dragged on and on and on, at least to me, here and now. I simply didn’t like it, still don’t. But, after talking with my editor and friend, Maria, I discovered something I think I knew all along. That this isn’t a story that can be contained to one book. It needs two. There are two halves to my main character, two parts of her that create a whole. And if I tried to cram everything in to one? Well, then, everybody loses. Me, the reader, Renata (my FMC). Her story suffers if not given room to breathe. But more on that below. On Thursday, I managed to finish chapter 27 (finally! My god.) and wrote 1,075 words.

As soon as I sat down on Friday, 255 words simply poured directly out of me The start of a new chapter, a move to a new season of Renata’s life. But after those initial words, I paused and took stock of where the timeline was currently vs where it was headed. I regrouped, wrote out everything that needed to be shared in my journal, and came back later that afternoon to write, and then write some more. I ended the day with 1,801 words.

Where I Ended + Upcoming Plans

In the end, I wrote a total of 5,267 words and finished Chapter 27, adding those words to Overall Word Count which now stands at 98,238 words. Yep. another big chapter. What can I say? I’m an over-writer through and through.

But looking back at my realization from Wednesday/ Thursday, that this story needs to be two books rather than one, this really blows the doors wide open as to what I do next.

First off, I am no longer feeling constrained by my word count. If there are two books needed to tell this story, then that provides me with more wiggle room in which to tell it. Renata is my most challenging character to date. She is layered and nuanced and hurt, so deeply hurt. She deserves all the time and all the pages in which to tell her full story without constraints.

So, what now? How do I move forward knowing I am writing not one book, but two?

Well. . . my plan is continue forward as I was. I plan to write Renata’s full story, all the way through. No stops. No breaks. I need to see everything out in the open in order to know what information is needed and where. She is an onion, with multiple layers, and those layers are going to shine through throughout our entire journey with her. They won’t be neat or chronological. As any person knows, past trauma rears its head at the unlikeliest of times. It isn’t pretty or linear. It’s messy and hard and you go through the same challenges again and again and again until you finally, finally, learn the lesson, figure out the tools you need to move on, to put the trauma behind you so that it doesn’t run the show. It never goes away, not fully. But it doesn’t get to continue driving you around, either.

This also changes up what my “rewards” will be moving forward. I mean, I MUST celebrate the completion of book one before heading in to book two. I already think I know where the end of one story ends and the other begins (though this might change in editing. Another reason why I want both books written at once. I need to pick the best place in which to break Renata’s world in two).

It also shifts my estimated time line. I thought I’d be able to knock out this first draft entirely by the beginning of June. I don’t believe that is realistic anymore, but I’m unsure what a good target date might be for a first draft. And thinking about it makes my heart race because, honestly, I can see the entire story playing out inside my head. And I want it on the page. Right now. (That’s Aries Sun energy, through and through) But I’ve added more work and definitely more time to this project. Perhaps I can eek it out by the end of the summer? We shall see.

Regardless, I am excited about this new development. I can’t wait to share more as the weeks, nay, months wear on.

Wish me luck!