There have been two surprising developments in the writing of Way of the Three-Year-Old Why in the last week.
But first, an update on progress.
Business fables tend to run around 40,000 words. I have set a target of 50,000 so I can tighten it up during the rewriting and editing phase. It might actually cut back to 30,000 or 35,000, but then need some additional material to close plot gaps.
With that in mind: I’m making good progress! I have written 8,461 words out of the target 50,000—just about 17%. I’m happy with that!
I’ve been aiming for at least 500 words per writing day. Because of medical appointments and other obligations, I don’t write every day, but I’ve had 12 writing days since I started, averaging 705 a day. Most days I actually get more than 1,000 words down, but a couple of days were way short—technically “writing days,” but something would come up with our disabled daughter so I had to quit early. That brought the daily average down.
I would honestly like to move faster, but, like you, I have to adapt to real life. Still, it’s reasonable to think I can finish the rough draft in about 45 to 60 more writing days. I don’t write every day, but on the other hand I tend to write closer to 1,000 when I do. So I can probably start on the rewrite and edit in a couple of months. Yay!
About those developments…
The mentor character has let me know that I got her name wrong to begin with. I started calling her Alara, but she has let me know her name is actually Callie. The name has significance, but it would be a spoiler for me to share that with you, so I’ll reserve that.
I’m using Scrivener software for writing, and one of the nice things about it is the ease with which I can go through what I’ve already written and change every occurrence of Alara to Callie. Sure, most any word processor can do that, but Scrivener gives such fine control over it, and it manages the multi-document format with ease.
In essence, Scrivener keeps each scene in a separate document, which makes it really easy to move pieces around. The Scrivener interface is basically a meta-document that enables you to deal with the whole book as if it were a single document while giving the flexibility of all those separate documents. (If you’re curious about Scrivener, follow the link. I’m an affiliate, which means that it wouldn’t cost you a dime more that way, but I could receive some benefit. Plus, there is a seriously good free trial.)
In any case, you will see in the book why “Callie” has some meaning in the context of the book. Hint: she is of Greek heritage.
The other development is that some of the thought-provoking material for Dan doesn’t come through Callie, but through some mysterious notes that show up for him in various ways. That was not part of the original outline, but these notes have inserted themselves into the plot, and I am honoring that.
Not sure how much of this to use…
Parts of 3YO? (my short version of the title) are autobiographical. Other parts are inspired by life, and yet others just come from my imagination. The challenges Dan faces with a severely disabled daughter, a partially disabled wife, and balancing care responsibilities with the need to make a living reflect some of my own, though I haven’t tried to make it a documentary.
So far, a big part of our own life has not reflected in the book, and I’m debating whether to draw on that or not.
We live in what is arguably the worst state in the United States in terms of support for disabled children. I’m pretty sure ours was the last state of 50 to take advantage of a federal program designed to ensure proper health care through state insurance for such children.
It may be even worse when it comes to providing care for profoundly disabled adults. It happens that at this moment the state is trying once again to discontinue the insurance that provides the nursing care that keeps our daughter alive. The message seems to be: go ahead and die and relieve us of this financial burden. In fact, thousands of families are caught up right now in this effort to throw people off the program.
From a narrative standpoint, this obviously would make sense to include as part of Dan’s journey. It would be an additional obstacle he has to deal with.
On the other hand, I may be too close to it to make effective narrative use of it. I don’t want to slop into raging about the injustice and sheer bureaucratic stupidity of the situation.
On the other hand, it’s an opportunity to call attention to a situation that hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people deal with across our nation. And, if you know classic story structure, it could also be an entirely appropriate barrier or conflict for our protagonist.
Any thoughts on that? Share them in comments on our Substack post, or if you got this in email, just hit “reply” if you would like.
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