I love seeing projects progressing. Last month I finished up a rather extensive rewrite of Supply Chain, and this month I'm going to reward myself with a First Draft (my favorite part of the writing process) of Right Sized.
The concept behind Right Sized is simple -- I start the story with an emotional firing of a seasoned company veteran by a young, ambitious manager, and then trace their lives afterward.
The company veteran (who already had some self-destructive habits and behaviors) crashes as a result of his termination. His self-confidence destroyed, he descends into a hell of his own making, pushing aside everyone that tries to help him.
At the same time the young manager's career is propelled forward, not in small part due to the "decisive actions" taken with the company veteran and a few other employees.
Then a funny thing begins to happen.
As the veteran hits rock bottom he recognizes nobody is going to save him, and slowly begins putting his life back together one piece at a time. The youthful wunderkind however, begins to find he's being outmaneuvered by a couple of corporate politicians that are far out of his league.
The story ends with confrontation between the two main protagonists with what I hope will be a surprise twist.
I love this stage of novel creation, even though it is probably the most challenging part of writing a book. It's where the general concepts hit the reality of the page. It's in this process that the characters really come to life and the story gets legs.
