Let's do this once more
There's something special about typing that last period - that last little dot of a punctuation mark.
Done.
This past Sunday afternoon, I put the period in the last sentence of the first draft of my new book, Hickory Trail. This won't be the last book I write, but it's the final book in this three-book journey that began in 2014 with Brookwood Road and bridged over Elm Street in 2016.
Oh, it's just the first draft. Over the next 10 months, this manuscript will be carved up, kicked around, rewritten more than once, and professionally edited - twice - before it's ready for public view in Octoberish 2018. It's just the first draft, but it sure feels good to have electronically sent it to a printer for spiral-binding and hard-copy reading.
For those interested in a back-story, I started Hickory Trail on Thursday, Sept. 7 of this year. It took three months and 10 days to pound out - mostly at night and on Saturday mornings - 95,323 words. I suspect it will gain another 5,000 net words during the rewriting and end up about the same size - 300 - pages as Brookwood Road.
Readers of the first two books know the characters. The books follow the main character, Frank Wilcox, and his exploits with brothers, family, and friends in small-town north Georgia during the 1960s and early 1970s. Frank's is an innocent life shielded, but not altogether sheltered, by close-knit family, friends-who-are-like-family, and a loving small town.
But, after the eighth grade, Frank's life changes. His family moves from the farm to Hickory Trail in a new subdivision near the county seat of Acorn, and Frank also steps into puberty and adolescence. Like most of his friends, he must get a job - a string of jobs - because the national economic recession is bearing down on his family. A game of Spin The Bottle at a Christmas party opens Frank's eyes regarding the girls he knows. He discovers disappointment and failure but gets back up with the help of family and friends. He learns to drive. A new sister is born. He sees, first-hand, the world's painful brokenness and it shapes him.
Just like Brookwood Road, there's that look into Frank's family. Despite the recession and the growing family, there's the nightly supper around the brown kitchen table. There's the adventure - not of lavish trips or big gifts - but of doing life together and laughing at and with one another's slips and stumbles.
All of this is against the backdrop of an emerging national drug culture, political uncertainty and scandal in the White House, high unemployment and high inflation, leisure suits, Hai Karate aftershave, and the construction of America's post-Vietnam rock and roll culture.
In the end, Frank Wilcox says farewell to Acorn.
Brookwood Road was a deep, emotional journey for me. Elm Street was fun. Hickory Trail, I think, takes the reader through the mid-1970s and shows how Frank Wilcox and his friends began to grow up. At times, edgier than the first two books, but as with life young adulthood is always edgier than childhood.
www.scottdvaughan.com
Done.
Oh, it's just the first draft. Over the next 10 months, this manuscript will be carved up, kicked around, rewritten more than once, and professionally edited - twice - before it's ready for public view in Octoberish 2018. It's just the first draft, but it sure feels good to have electronically sent it to a printer for spiral-binding and hard-copy reading.
For those interested in a back-story, I started Hickory Trail on Thursday, Sept. 7 of this year. It took three months and 10 days to pound out - mostly at night and on Saturday mornings - 95,323 words. I suspect it will gain another 5,000 net words during the rewriting and end up about the same size - 300 - pages as Brookwood Road.
Readers of the first two books know the characters. The books follow the main character, Frank Wilcox, and his exploits with brothers, family, and friends in small-town north Georgia during the 1960s and early 1970s. Frank's is an innocent life shielded, but not altogether sheltered, by close-knit family, friends-who-are-like-family, and a loving small town.
But, after the eighth grade, Frank's life changes. His family moves from the farm to Hickory Trail in a new subdivision near the county seat of Acorn, and Frank also steps into puberty and adolescence. Like most of his friends, he must get a job - a string of jobs - because the national economic recession is bearing down on his family. A game of Spin The Bottle at a Christmas party opens Frank's eyes regarding the girls he knows. He discovers disappointment and failure but gets back up with the help of family and friends. He learns to drive. A new sister is born. He sees, first-hand, the world's painful brokenness and it shapes him.
Just like Brookwood Road, there's that look into Frank's family. Despite the recession and the growing family, there's the nightly supper around the brown kitchen table. There's the adventure - not of lavish trips or big gifts - but of doing life together and laughing at and with one another's slips and stumbles.
All of this is against the backdrop of an emerging national drug culture, political uncertainty and scandal in the White House, high unemployment and high inflation, leisure suits, Hai Karate aftershave, and the construction of America's post-Vietnam rock and roll culture.
In the end, Frank Wilcox says farewell to Acorn.
Brookwood Road was a deep, emotional journey for me. Elm Street was fun. Hickory Trail, I think, takes the reader through the mid-1970s and shows how Frank Wilcox and his friends began to grow up. At times, edgier than the first two books, but as with life young adulthood is always edgier than childhood.
www.scottdvaughan.com
I know it must be a good feeling to put that final dot. Prayers for smooth editing. I am eagerly awaiting the final book!
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