Nearing the End

As the title to this entry suggests, my wife and I are finally nearing the end of our book. It’s hard to believe that after all this time, we’re finally writing the last chapter to The Last VanDaryn. We started on the chapter two nights ago. The first night didn’t go so well. We’d “known” for months which character’s point-of-view we’d need for the scene, but once we started writing it, we realized we’d been wrong.

My wife and I have run into the point-of-view issue quite a few times of late. Our story contains some very strong characters, and when they end up in the same scene together, it’s not so easy to pick the right eyes through which to see those events. We had so many issues because of it that we got into a heated debate about how the big battle (that every fantasy adventure is “required” to have) was going to work. My wife was convinced that we’d equipped our characters with a battle plan that didn’t work, because the scene just wasn’t working. I insisted that the plan made sense, and in the end, my wife was the one who realized we needed to try it from a different character’s point-of-view. It was amazing how well the scene worked once we made the change. The pacing of the fight and even the build-up to it worked so much better. Even after all these years of writing, I’ve gained a new appreciation for just how much a different perspective can change a scene for better or worse.

At one time, I’d feared the book would barely break the 90,000 word mark. I should have known better. With just a little more to write, we’re already at 110,000 words. That might slim up a bit once we do the editing, but we’ll have to wait to see. We’ll probably finish the last chapter tonight, and we plan to celebrate by popping the cork on the bottle of sparkling wine you see on the right.

I’m rather excited about reaching the end of The Last VanDaryn for several reasons. Most of all, I’m eager to hunt for an agent who can find us a publisher and thus make some money off of our book. Another reason will be my solo effort The Cold Shoulder. My fantasy/thriller novel has suffered from neglect while Sheri and I focused on our joint project. During the past year, our writing group the Ten Page Club has enjoyed the samples I’ve brought from that book. I’m hopeful that I can finish that one pretty quickly once I no longer have The Last VanDaryn to worry about.