I am so close to finishing the first rough draft of my novel I can almost taste it. The words are painted on the pages (electronically of course), my characters have cellular structures and they piss and eat just like the rest of us. They are alive! I created them. I pumped life into fictional people. I gave them ticks and problems, desires and dreams. Then I kill them (some of them). It’s brutal. I give them pain and remorse, they cry and fight. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose.
I have a scene where someone spits in the face of my main character. I hate spit. Writing that scene felt dirty and vile. If the readers feel the same then I’ve done something right.
The summer of 2018 I pulled out a notebook over eight years old. It is a rough outline for a novel that I never planned to write. You see, over a couple of drinks, I would start to joke around with my friends about zombies attacking our city. I’d size up the house I lived in and told everyone it was no good, too many windows. I’d have to come to one of their houses. We would work out scenarios of who would live and who wouldn’t. The conversations were so much fun that I started to keep notes.
Eight years, two homes, three kids, a dog, two major career changes later…I am writing a book. Scratch that. I am almost done writing my first novel.
Baltimore Zombies. The title is a work in progress. I’ll have to have a naming game when I’m closer to completion.
Currently, I have one hundred and twenty thousand words written (120,000 words y’all). I wrote so much I didn’t realize I have gone well into book two already. An average novel is somewhere between seventy thousand and eighty thousand, respectively.
I just need to add in five chapters from the second point of view character and then my book is done!
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Says every writer everywhere who ever lived.
The book isn’t done. Editing will probably take me several months and I’m anticipating it being more painful than the writing process.
Edits will be done though. And then what?
Truth. I have no clue.
Melisa Peterson Lewis 