The Road to Samarkand

Cast your eyes down.

You cannot see Samarkand from here, but the road is before you.

Look to the road, see the footprints in the dust. Others have walked this way. Take one step, and then another, and then a third. Rest in the cool of the evening, and walk when the sun rises, when the muezzin calls the faithful at dawn. Take one step, and then another, and then a third. Others have walked this way. Look to the road, see the footprints in the dust.

The road is before you, though you cannot see Samarkand from here.

Cast your eyes down.

And walk.

As of late last night, Box of Trouble is at 101,000 words.

Given that Theft of Fire was 154,000 words, does this mean I am 2/3 done?

Not necessarily. One doesn't know exactly where the goalposts are. Many of these words are summary and notes which require another pass, at least, to be finished.

I use a color coded system for scenes.

A blank white icon is a stub, where I know a scene is needed, but there's nothing there but a sentence or two to describe it.

The icon becomes red, when the scene is populated by copious notes about what has to happen, what characters want, are thinking, will say, what the location looks like, sounds like, smells like. Often this will hundreds or even thousands of words.

When these notes are assembled into a detailed summary, the scene becomes yellow. The word "summary" may not sound very complete, but a yellow scene is actually pretty close... these summaries are beat by beat, and contain all the action, and much of the actual dialogue. They tend to lack only description.

A green scene has the literal language of the scene written and complete, and lacks only a pass to fix the continuity errors. There are typically a fair amount of these, not because I can't remember my own story, but because I am writing out of order, and my notion of the details can evolve as I write.

A green scene becomes blue when I have read it in order, in the context of the preceding green scenes, fixed continuity, and made a final pass to brush up the language and description.

Scenes tend not to turn blue until everything else, or almost everything else, is green.

Right now, I am looking at a smattering of white, red, and yellow, with some green here and there. And day by day, the white turns red, the red turns yellow, and some days, something yellow even turns green.

So am I 2/3 done?

I can't say yes. Many of those 101K words are red words, or yellow ones, and will have to be rewritten.

But I also can't say no. A yellow scene is often contains almost as many words as the green one it evolves into, and it can sometimes be rewritten very fast. Or not.

I can't see Samarkand from here. You never can until you reach it.

But every day, I walk

Original Post