Right now the novel is an overly detailed outline. I need to stop planning and start putting down dialog and descriptions, and, you know, paragraphs and the like.
I imagine I will tear right through it and then discover that I have an overly long fundamentally flawed short story.
Calling this my practice novel allows me to ditch everything that is conventional and to try out the weird ideas that are still showing up at odd times. (The muse is not keeping me up as much anymore, but quite often I’ll watch something that influences how I want this to turn out. I have notes like, “Dark subject needs humor. Don’t want Poirot season 10. Raccoons?”)
I like the idea that it might be humorous, yet dark, because Jerry’s version was so dark and angry I want to heal it.
This weekend I’m going to rewrite what I have from first-person heroine POV. Really glad I stopped to outline, otherwise I’d have a whole book to rewrite.