It’s done! Hiro’s book is DONE!!
I took the idea (and the name, because deathmarch sounds pretty damn serious) from Elizabeth Bear, who tends to do it when she gets close to the end of her work in progress. It’s just…knowing you’re close, and not stopping till you’re done. It took me 4,958 words today, but I did it.
To me, there are two tricks to a deathmarch. One is knowing with a fair amount of detail what I am doing. This happens to me only near the end–I’m not one who plans the whole book. Usually I know the first few scenes, have a vague sense of the middle, and know maybe the very last scene–but not how the characters got there. With this book, though, it was worse. Because it’s a trilogy, I know the very end of the last book–I knew nothing of the end of the first.
Yesterday morning at McDonald’s (God bless McDonald’s and its muse-inspiring influence!) brainstorming across the table from my editing friend, I figured out two things. One, that Skah’s element is Earth. Two, that his son was attuned to the crystal he made. This unknotted the last obstacles, and I saw my ending before me. I spent the rest of the day threshing out the climax, jotting four pages of notes while I worked out a complex and (hopefully!) exciting scene.
Today I wrote it. That’s the other part–I need to know I can get through it in a day (still making sense!) before I will deathmarch. A deathmarch loses its power when stretched over two days, especially if I have to work. I had to be able to do it today.
The plan was sixteen wars–ten minutes of writing, five minutes of break–over four hours. I did most of the wars. I came out with 3,000+ words. Then I kept writing.
And I did it! It’s done! YAY!!!!