23,333 Words

Lots of writers work faster than I do.  Plenty of my Facebook friends will regularly post one or two thousand words a day, and they’ll do this day after day.  In fact, Stephen King thinks people are serious slackers if they don’t get three to five thousand words down. I’m just excited that I’ve finally figured out how all the revelations are going to unroll such that my character is ready to take a serious leap.  It’s so incredibly important that readers believe in these kind of choices.  Everything falls apart if the motivation doesn’t work. I’m thinking of this novel where the protagonist decides to get on a boat.  There was absolutely no good reason for the character to do this except for the fact that the rest of the novel was all about the subsequent journey.  It’s tough to sink deeply into a book when you have the following dialogue with yourself:

Question: Why did the character decide to get into the boat?
Answer:  Because the author needed her to.