This morning I finished the first draft of my latest long work entitled, for the time being, Stronger Than Hate. I have been throwing some other titles around, one of which is Eat Your Pain. I'm kind of partial to the other title, but we'll see. Things have a way of changing. The original title was That Sinking Feeling. Sounds atrocious when I read that one out loud.
The word count pre-rewrites and edits is just over 50K. I thought hitting 30K was going to be a challenge, but this story wrote itself. This was one of the more pleasant writing experiences so far concerning larger works. I actually woke up one night at three in the morning and couldn't sleep because I just had to work on the story. I told myself that I needed to sleep so I wouldn't be groggy at work the following day, but the story wouldn't leave me alone, so I wrote for an hour and a half and then went back to sleep. Wasn't a bit groggy the next day, either. This morning my son woke me at 5:45. I told him to go back to bed, and he did, however my mind began swirling with the final pages of the story. I was too tired to finish it last night, but as soon as I woke, the ending became clear.
It's such a great feeling to complete the first draft of a novella or novel length work. There's still a huge amount of work before this thing will be ready to submit to publishers, but getting the story typed from beginning to end is quite a feat.
As for the story itself, well, it's crazy. For some reason I've been on an extreme horror bender for the past year or so. I told myself after I finished my second novel last year that I would explore an idea I have that is more psychological and less violent and depraved, but when this idea struck, I couldn't let it go. I had started the story early 2011, but hit a snag and couldn't figure out where it was going. After seeing the behavior of some of the Wall Street protesters--the pissing and shitting and raping and such (yes, I know those people don't represent the entire movement, so back off!)--I was inspired and the story bloomed from there. I was watching a program on ID last night about several people who kidnapped an elderly woman and put her body in the back of her car, of which they stole. They carted her around town and showed her to several of their friends and family (fingerprints on the trunk of her car belonged to at least ten different people!). If I thought my story was too much, and that people really wouldn't gather together in the name of something evil and heinous, the deplorable behavior of some of the Wall Street protesters and the people who didn't report that kidnapped woman's body validated my pessimistic look at certain facets of society.
Stronger Than Hate is extreme, however the horrors of this book, for the most part, are very real. I am continually surprised at what humans are capable of.
What a hell of a sad note to end this post on.
So be it.
Cheers!
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