Finally at the Finish Line

We are approaching the end of this 30 day effort to write a 50,000 novel and turn it in to get credit for the time spent and words lighting up the blank spaces of paper. Wrestling with the devil is what some people call it. I have over 46,000 words written, and it has been a heck of a time writing all this material on just the childhood developmental period of Alexander. I will consider it a framework about which I will somehow or other turn it into a finished product ready to be published sometime after I get this much done.

It did me some good to tackle this project as I learned so much more from this effort than I had thought I would. In truth, most of the histories are just legendary materials probably better suited for some epic poem than to be taken literally as the way in which things actually happened.

You know this experience has taught me a lot about Alexander and Homer as I have had to read and recount the Iliad more than once, as it is a major part of this story. I intend to use a paragraph from each chapter as the heading of Alexander's journals, but the problem in writing all that is that it became very tedious and boring. The journals themselves are difficult enough but to try to condense a chapter into a single paragraph and then to include a paragraph for stylistic purposes made this a very interesting but time consuming and at times tedious effort.

I was very surprised when I began to reread the Iliad at how much I had not noticed at the first reading, and that turns out to be the same with some of the history books as well. How I wish I would have noted the author, title, and date of each and every book I had read when I first began the study of Alexander, but alas,alack, I did not, and while I bought many so that I am using those for reference, I remember reading pieces that have stuck in my mind, but can't remember who, what, and why now.

I will soon be finished. When I reach the end, I will send it to NaNoWriMo and see what happens next. It is certainly a worthwhile effort but very time consuming. Everything else is on hold for awhile.

When finished, I will briefly describe the book. It is quite interesting really but is being written in chunks and bits and pieces. I wrote the narrative first, and am now filling it all in with a variety of means. That is why it is all a first draft. A lot of rewrites and editing to be done. But it has been fun!