Photo credit: Ahmed Yaaniu

The end of the #1000wordsofsummer challenge is near, and I’m starting to look ahead.

I need to devote serious thought to the structure of the book. Even before the challenge, I was writing discrete scenes here and there in an effort to figure out what the story is–how these people will move ahead, how they will grow and change, what will happen to them and how they will adjust. As a result, I’ve amassed thousands of words with no particular connections. It’s like creating a group of islands with no bridges. Sooner or later, I need to figure out how to get from one place to another.

My best guess is that some of these scenes won’t end up fitting into the book, which means I’ll have to file them away. This is one of the perks of writing on the computer: you can cut a section and dump it into another document so that if you decide later that you want some or all of it back, it still exists. Different people use different terms for these documents. I usually label them with the original file name plus “extra lang” so I can keep track of where I first created it.

This isn’t just my usual packrat tendency at work. There really have been times when I’ve pulled language from an extra lang file and used it again, whether in the original piece or in a different one. I’m not saying it happens often, but often enough to keep me doing this.

Plus, it’s a nice cushion for those of us who aren’t very good at throwing things away.

Last day tomorrow. Hard to believe.

Then, the hard work begins.