Journal: Shakespeare Project Process

Very mixed feelings working on my Shakespeare project. Don't know how to describe. I was right about one thing. Very little time or energy to actually think about it. I know the basic idea. The shape of it. I've got the original Shakespeare play to rely on, after all. Of course, that doesn't really do me much good since I'm not exactly following the play. I've written—what?—approximately 30,000 words, and I'm still mucking about in act one. And, once I'm finally out of act one, I think the rest of the plot is just going to fly by. So, I think this is going to be very top-heavy, so to speak, which worries me for very stupid reasons. Oh, it can't be too short. Well, why not? Because the anticipated eBook price will seem unfair or something? Can't charge as much as for the others if it is only half the length? Seriously? Is that what's bugging me? That's just really stupid.

The most important thing is for the story to be whatever it turns out to be. I shouldn't be going by such arbitrarily stupid ideas as minimum word counts. Irrelevant. Arbitrary minimum word counts is one of the leading causes of padding. The other leading causes of padding that come to mind are unwarranted feelings of self-importance and bloody-minded delaying tactics. Can't get to that important bit yet. Not enough has happened. But, I digress.

Actually, one of the things that does worry me is the pacing of the whole mess. Not enough build-up. Set-up. Things seeming clumped together. Wanting to add more in the name of adequately setting the stage, as it were. Which is its own trap. More self-importance masquerading as pacing. More padding. [...]