Some Notes on the Preparation of a Novella

So I'm writing away on this whole novella enterprise (begun in earnest around September) and I'm stumbling through both the editing and completion portion. I've only re-wrote the beginning three times now, replaced narrators, and added whole scenes. I'm beginning to work about stretching this past the whole novella thing. That's the problem with writing, it's far more organic than we would often like it. This is not to say that writing comes down upon us in some magically driven type force. Rather that the whole process takes a lot of time, patience, and effort.

As it stands now I'm about three fifths done the physical writing portion with the totality of it at least sketched out. "The Bastion of Industrial Decline," may not even keep its name. While I like the ring of it and can personally see the tie between story and title, but worry it might be too vague for those outside my head. It's still fun to sitdown and write, just that private time and the space to get into that mode necessary to craft words into something meaningful seems limited at best over the previous few weeks. I've crawled to only about 700 or so new words in the past 2 weeks. I'm needing a few days worth of burst to get this novella moving in the right direction before it loses all sense of speed and momentum.

I know that my novel in clearly in the midst of a holding pattern. Hopefully it won't be a perminant one. But again, those type of things are rarely close to certain. Poetry also seems to be eating time in regards to the craft. This isn't a horrid thing, just slightly problematic in that I would like to finish this one project before branching too deeply into newer stories. Just one of those things. Focus is an important thing for any artist. Just trying to pull mine back online before fiction workshop rears its head.