NaNoWriMo Summation Scene

I am a bit early on this as I have not yet achieved my ultimate goal of 70,000 words. However, I have reached the National Novel Writing Month mandate of 50,000 words. I'm at 50,491 actually.

The joy is there but not the irrational whoops of joy from previous years. I know so much more about novel writing, my creative process, the editing process, and what happens when I finish a book. It is true with novels as with art that you never finish a work. You just stop at an interesting place. It is also true about novel writing that the first draft is just a beginning. For sheer quantities of revisions, script writing for feature films wins out. Novel revisions make up for that in word quantity.

Yes, it's all about revisions folks. Once the glow of creation wears off, it's back to the salt mines of checking plot lines, character arcs, grammar, and other mundane technicalities such as deciding where the chapters begin and end. Unlike my fine art process in which I generally create an image in one sitting with little preparation or afterthought. I suspect my art could use a little kick in the development pants, too.

This year's novel pulled in characters from previous novels, as well as embellished plot lines, and added a third book to the Cosmic Control series. Sorta weird as I had no intention to do any of that when I started writing. I'm still grappling with a summation or log line for the plot. Here's a first try.

Cosmic Control: Defeat of the UnRegs

Working cover with
working title.

The story involves two soul twins who were separated before birth and came to life in separate universes with parallel time lines, which should have guaranteed they would never meet. And in a normal world they wouldn't have. However, the Prime Locus is tampering with the time lines again and the twins are needed to thwart his vicious and devious plans to destroy the power of gifteds. Enter the UnRegs—the UnRegistered Citizens—a huge confabulation of pirate-style, off-grid individuals who have been around for so long they are quite numerous and have fostered a wide variety of subcultures. Some UnRegs are lawful, some aren't, and some suffer from situational ethics. They have their own goals for changing history. Within all this, the two sisters must determine a course of action that will save time, prevent collapsing the time lines in favor of the evil Prime Locus, and yet still emerge with their identities and lives intact. (Your basic save the universe scenario.)

It's a lot of fun. Well, it has been for me anyway. And I intend to continue having fun for a couple more weeks yet while ignoring the distant call to get down to serious editing work.