Sudden Death

The Chosen Grandma story – and the Last Man Standing – have been going for 66 weeks now, more than a year, and people are ready for it to end. By which I mean, people on Young Writers Society are getting excited for the next round of LMS.

Which is really my fault. Someone posted in the LMS club that they had decided to participate in the next round, and I signal-boosted that shit. LOOK, GUYS. OUR FIRST CONTESTANT FOR ROUND IV.

Once I shared that, a bunch more people declared their intent. So then I shared their posts, too. And wrote a post listing all the reasons writers should try LMS. Which led to even more people declaring their intent. At this point I pretty much just log onto YWS, share all the posts about LMS I can find, and log off again.

So people are raring for Round III to finish up so they can get started on a shiny new round. If there were only two contestants left, the creator would have said, “Hey, do you mind sharing the crown?”

But there are three of us, so instead we’re going into SUDDEN DEATH.

Our goal throughout the contest has been 1000 words by Sunday night. This week, it’s 1500. Nbd, since that’s what I shoot for each week anyway. Next week, it’s 3000. The week after, 5000. Then 8000. Then 12,000.

Then 20,000. It’ll be like National Novel Writing Month in the middle of June.

I’m low-key terrified. Because, wow, after more than a year of writing only 1500 words a week of the story, will I be able to adjust so quickly to writing more? But y’all know how much I love NaNoWriMo, so: yes, probably.

Mostly I’m excited, because I’m getting to the serious stuff now. Diving into the climaxy bits. I don’t mind writing a lot more if it means I get to tear through those. And as I’ve gotten closer to the end, I’ve been wanting to move along faster and get this draft finished.

The only downside is that I also want to win the contest, and I’m quite sure I don’t have 50,000 words left. So if I finish my novel first, I’ll have to continue the story afterward. Here’s Edna & Co. at Christmas. Here they are on a trip to Canada. Whoops, random stop by customs. Crap, customs is searching the car. Crap, it happens again on the way back.

(It actually used to happen to my dad all the time, but that’s a story for another time.)

It would actually be kind of fun to write stuff like that, but if we go on long enough I’ll have to write longer and longer bits that exist outside the borders of the story. And I don’t usually write off-shoots of my characters at holidays or on vacation or anything else that happens before the start or after the end of the novel. I try to leave them alone once I’m done torturing them.

But still. I’m excited. Bring it on.