I finished the first draft of my novella last weekend. It came in at just over 38,000 words. I also dictated the remaining section into Word, so now it’s all digitized. I made one quick pass through to fix up the artifacts from voice-to-speech. Now it’s time for a good hard edit before I pass it off to someone else to read while I catch up on other things that have been pushed to the side while I concentrated on this work. I’m quite happy with how it turned out, but now it’s up to other people to let me know if it’s any good. Fingers crossed.
One strange after-effect of finishing, though. Throughout the four weeks it took me to get from beginning to end, I thought about the story all the time, especially when I was going to sleep at night. I would work out the next day’s storyline as my mind drifted off. It was pretty amazing. But now that I’m done, I don’t know what to concentrate on when I’m going to sleep. I did manage to identify one plot hole the other night, but beside that, I’m sort of stymied. Guess I’ll have to figure out what I’m going to write next and set my subconscious mind to work on that.
I’ve been enjoying Better Call Saul, but my wife bailed after the second episode. She’s not a big fan of stories with despicable protagonists. I like all the little, subtle nods to Breaking Bad, and glad to see Mike getting something more to do than send Jimmy back to get his parking validated.
I also enjoyed a six-part series called Babylon that aired on Sundance. It was about a young American female media wonk who is hired by the commissioner of the London police force to handle public relations. It’s an odd show, part satire, part straight drama, but it has an interesting arc. No word yet whether there’ll be a second series. I don’t think it set the world on fire over here.
I’ve been limping along with The Walking Dead, but last week’s preachy, let’s pump the metaphors episode wasn’t encouraging. Tonight is the two-hour series finale of The Mentalist. Looks like there might be a wedding. Enjoying this final season of Justified, too, although this week’s entry was a little weaker, though a weak Justified is still a ton better than just about anything else. I’ve been trying to find time to watch the ten episodes of Bosch on Amazon Prime (Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch, based on the Michael Connelly novels), but not yet. I watched the re-cut first episode and part of the second but then I got sidelined. That novella really did consume me for a month, but I liked how much I got written in that short period of time. All of it by hand.
