Remember the post I made a few months ago about submitting Teahouse?
Something happened with the communication between myself and the publisher, and the manuscript was never read. No big deal, really. He got back to my “Hey, have you gotten around to reading my submission?” email within a day and I resent the file.
Now I have to sit and agonize all over again, though.
I don’t get this way with short stories. I write them, read them over, revise and send them out, often forgetting about them after I’ve recorded them over on Duotrope. If they’re accepted, great. If they’re not, they go out again. I can do this over and over and over and never feel even the slightest pang of anxiety. I know my stuff when it comes to short fiction, and for the most part I’m unshakably confident about my abilities.
With novels? Forget it. I’m riddled with self-doubt and nervousness from the moment I write the first sentence to the time I feel I’m finally ready to send it out into the world. I have zero confidence overall with a novel, even if there are paragraphs here and there (sometimes even whole chapters, believe it or not) that I feel are completely solid.
I can write short stories just fine.
I can whip out flash like nobody’s business.
I can edit the hell out of anything you put in front of me.
I can read, formulate an opinion for and review other writers’ novels with absolutely no trouble.
I can conduct interviews with authors, editors and publishers without a single issue or dull moment.
I cannot write novels without reducing myself to a twitching, nervous wreck.
I used to think that I only needed a bit more experience in writing long fiction before the feeling would fade away, but it hasn’t diminished much at all. Between Teahouse, Rain and now Ghostbox, I still feel like I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing. As a reviewer, I’m handed books all the time. As I read them (and the ones I read simply for pleasure), I notice how each author handles scope, pacing, subplots and all the other things that go into long-form fiction. None of them in any way resemble what I end up throwing down on paper. Compared to most other writers, my own novel-writing efforts feel very sparse, like short stories that have dragged on too long. My own work feels like it lacks the layers characteristic to novels. They feel like they’re nothing but details dictated to the reader in a dull monotone broadcast by a broken, rusting piece of antique machinery.
I do go back to my older work, long after it’s been finished, and reread with a fresh eye. Occasionally I find myself even enjoying it from a detached standpoint, but I always wind up asking myself, “Is this really the way it should have been?” I often find myself wanting to write it differently but completely unable to do so.
I think one of my biggest problems, at least with Teahouse, is that it takes place (in part, at least) at the junction between two cultures, and I’m terrified I’m going to be incorrect with some facts or that my intent is going to be misconstrued. I remember during the beta reader phase when one critiquer told me that involving Japanese characters made me look like an anime fanatic. I wanted to slam my face off my desk. They also, I believe, told me I’d ripped key plot points off a well-known Japanese film, which it only had the most passing of similarities to. A common event (and I mean common - this is the kind of thing that you read about in papers or see on the news frequently) occurs in both stories. Oh, I was furious. I almost changed the entire backstory. That’s how paranoid I became. It’s a good thing I decided against it, but still, what if this happens all over again if/when the book is published? Is it good enough to withstand that kind of nonsense? I don’t know.
I’ve been driving my author buddies, and even some of my non-writer confidantes, nuts with this lately. They shush me and tell me I’m crazy, or that my long fiction is just fine, but I still feel like scrapping it and starting all over most of the time. Every time I update Rain I want to just tank it and forget the project was ever conceived. A little voice inside me constantly pipes up and lets me know it’s probably better to just conclude the story at its logical end and be done with it sans drama, so my little Facebook novel still exists.
I don’t know. I doubt this feeling will ever go away, no matter how many times I finish a novel manuscript. I suppose it’s just one of those weird personality defects that you can never rid yourself of. I will forever be the paranoid novel-writer, no matter how much my skills improve.
I suppose there are worse things I could be, like the horrible writer who doesn’t realize they’re horrible. I think that would be more humiliating in the long run.
Showing posts with label fears. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fears. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Room to Write - "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid"
"Make a list of the things you fear. Pick one and describe it in concrete and specific detail."
This one was a bit difficult for me, because my most prominent fear is more abstract than most. I'm not afraid of physically tangible things like snakes, rats or spiders. I'm wary of heights but not necessarily afraid of them, and I can climb a ladder or stand on a bridge without falling to pieces. What really scares me is more of a concept, and it was really hard to pin down exactly how it affects me without becoming redundant.
---
I am afraid of failure. Not all kinds of failure, mind you, but the kind of failure that is the end result of some misguided or underwhelming effort. As a child, do you remember being told that you could accomplish anything so long as you put forth your best effort? Do you remember fantasizing about growing up to become the President or developing the cure to a deadly disease? I do.
I was going to be a ballerina, a belly dancer and an astronaut. Just because they told me I could be anything if I wanted.
But that really isn't true. No, not even close. The people who succeed and achieve brilliance are, to be completely frank and unnecessarily blunt, anomalies. These are people who were in the right place, had made the right social contacts and possessed a set of adequate skills at the perfect moment in time. Perhaps they made monumental effort to get to where they made it to, but effort alone isn't going to reward you with everything you've ever wanted. In fact, it may result in nothing.
Every time I go to a shopping mall this concept is hammered home. Every time I see a table full of Twilight books at Barnes or a rack of Twilight shirts at the front of a Hot Topic I'm reminded of this. I'm not going to derail this exercise by spending more time than necessary explaining in depth my issues with Stephenie Meyer, but let me say that there are a great many truly brilliant and altogether under-read authors who are passed up by young readers in order to salivate over her latest book. If you buy into the concept of effort and good faith yielding rewards, this is a cold slap in the face by an arrogant, sparkly marble hand.
This is what frightens me. This is what causes me to second-guess myself or, even worse, to lose interest in achieving. Simply knowing that putting forth time, effort and hope could very well (and, statistically, probably) do nothing but bring my faults to the public fore is terrifying.
What if I write a novel and every agent rejects me? What if every publishing house blows me off? What if I'm exposed to my peers as a fraud and a wannabe? What if people find out I really don't know what I'm doing and am usually just winging it? What if I manage to successfully navigate the world of publishing (which is really an achievement in and of itself) and then nobody reads me?
I think I would prefer an epic chorus of negative reviews to the silence of being ignored.
I'm really getting way ahead of myself here, though, because to be either mocked or ignored you have to put yourself in front of people, and this fear is keeping me frozen behind a thick, dark curtain. Nobody knows I'm here. My friends are barely, if at all, aware of my ambition. I'm terrified and unsure if I should put myself in the vulnerable position of writer-in-public, but yet at the very same time I know what happens to me when I try to leave this urge behind me. I grow depressed. I grow fat. I lose the will to do anything but wallow in self-pity and bitterness.
I become someone who isn't me. That is much, much more frightening than being mocked for being a crappy writer.
How unbelievably hilarious it is that I suffer from the dual fears of stagnation and progress? It seems that no matter which path I take ( and it's obvious at this point that I've already chosen one over the other) there's going to be something waiting just out of view to frighten me. If it won't come during my waking hours it's sure to find me in my sleep. I have frequent nightmares, always with failure as the core theme. When my fish are sick I have dreams that feature closeups of tanks full of still-living, half-decomposed occupants, jaws and heads with gaping holes, gills struggling to function, fins barely mobile. This is what you've done to them, I tell myself, because you didn't take care of them when you could have. After waking I invariably do a water change or swap out filters and start testing ammonia levels, because I realize, at least for a while, that inaction is far worse than failure after effort.
There is no choice for me. I have to do what I have to do, but the end result of this doing is a horrible blank in the future. There is no guarantee, no safety net, no consolation prize. I suppose I could very well pull the adult version of the taking-my-ball-and-going-home stunt and publish my work myself, but even then I'd be subject to the same pass-fail standards of success that are prevalent everywhere else. And I'd have to deal with the added stress of trying to convince the rest of the publishing world to deal with me on terms they're not often willing to deal on.
I will soldier on, and hope for the best, because the shudder-in-my-chest fear that falls upon me when I think of being mocked and torn apart is nothing compared to the wake-up-screaming fear I feel during the nights when I have horrible dreams full of guilt for not trying.
This one was a bit difficult for me, because my most prominent fear is more abstract than most. I'm not afraid of physically tangible things like snakes, rats or spiders. I'm wary of heights but not necessarily afraid of them, and I can climb a ladder or stand on a bridge without falling to pieces. What really scares me is more of a concept, and it was really hard to pin down exactly how it affects me without becoming redundant.
---
I am afraid of failure. Not all kinds of failure, mind you, but the kind of failure that is the end result of some misguided or underwhelming effort. As a child, do you remember being told that you could accomplish anything so long as you put forth your best effort? Do you remember fantasizing about growing up to become the President or developing the cure to a deadly disease? I do.
I was going to be a ballerina, a belly dancer and an astronaut. Just because they told me I could be anything if I wanted.
But that really isn't true. No, not even close. The people who succeed and achieve brilliance are, to be completely frank and unnecessarily blunt, anomalies. These are people who were in the right place, had made the right social contacts and possessed a set of adequate skills at the perfect moment in time. Perhaps they made monumental effort to get to where they made it to, but effort alone isn't going to reward you with everything you've ever wanted. In fact, it may result in nothing.
Every time I go to a shopping mall this concept is hammered home. Every time I see a table full of Twilight books at Barnes or a rack of Twilight shirts at the front of a Hot Topic I'm reminded of this. I'm not going to derail this exercise by spending more time than necessary explaining in depth my issues with Stephenie Meyer, but let me say that there are a great many truly brilliant and altogether under-read authors who are passed up by young readers in order to salivate over her latest book. If you buy into the concept of effort and good faith yielding rewards, this is a cold slap in the face by an arrogant, sparkly marble hand.
This is what frightens me. This is what causes me to second-guess myself or, even worse, to lose interest in achieving. Simply knowing that putting forth time, effort and hope could very well (and, statistically, probably) do nothing but bring my faults to the public fore is terrifying.
What if I write a novel and every agent rejects me? What if every publishing house blows me off? What if I'm exposed to my peers as a fraud and a wannabe? What if people find out I really don't know what I'm doing and am usually just winging it? What if I manage to successfully navigate the world of publishing (which is really an achievement in and of itself) and then nobody reads me?
I think I would prefer an epic chorus of negative reviews to the silence of being ignored.
I'm really getting way ahead of myself here, though, because to be either mocked or ignored you have to put yourself in front of people, and this fear is keeping me frozen behind a thick, dark curtain. Nobody knows I'm here. My friends are barely, if at all, aware of my ambition. I'm terrified and unsure if I should put myself in the vulnerable position of writer-in-public, but yet at the very same time I know what happens to me when I try to leave this urge behind me. I grow depressed. I grow fat. I lose the will to do anything but wallow in self-pity and bitterness.
I become someone who isn't me. That is much, much more frightening than being mocked for being a crappy writer.
How unbelievably hilarious it is that I suffer from the dual fears of stagnation and progress? It seems that no matter which path I take ( and it's obvious at this point that I've already chosen one over the other) there's going to be something waiting just out of view to frighten me. If it won't come during my waking hours it's sure to find me in my sleep. I have frequent nightmares, always with failure as the core theme. When my fish are sick I have dreams that feature closeups of tanks full of still-living, half-decomposed occupants, jaws and heads with gaping holes, gills struggling to function, fins barely mobile. This is what you've done to them, I tell myself, because you didn't take care of them when you could have. After waking I invariably do a water change or swap out filters and start testing ammonia levels, because I realize, at least for a while, that inaction is far worse than failure after effort.
There is no choice for me. I have to do what I have to do, but the end result of this doing is a horrible blank in the future. There is no guarantee, no safety net, no consolation prize. I suppose I could very well pull the adult version of the taking-my-ball-and-going-home stunt and publish my work myself, but even then I'd be subject to the same pass-fail standards of success that are prevalent everywhere else. And I'd have to deal with the added stress of trying to convince the rest of the publishing world to deal with me on terms they're not often willing to deal on.
I will soldier on, and hope for the best, because the shudder-in-my-chest fear that falls upon me when I think of being mocked and torn apart is nothing compared to the wake-up-screaming fear I feel during the nights when I have horrible dreams full of guilt for not trying.
Monday, March 2, 2009
It's Been a While
In all honesty, writing took a backseat to the rest of my life for a while. It was a combination of outside events and internal turbulence that did it, I think.
On the outside, reading for pleasure has given way to film watching. 2008 was the Year of the Fifty Book Challenge, and I ended the year with sixty-one new reads. This year I’m challenging myself to see more than one hundred films, on DVD specifically, and I’m up to twenty-four so far. I’ll finish the twenty-fifth today or tomorrow. I’ve been breaking my movies down to forty-minute chunks to watch while I’m running on the elliptical every day.
I should be writing every day for hours at a time, seeing how I lost my job two weeks ago. Six years at Waste Management and I’m lost in a “restructuring.” For some people this could have been a catastrophic loss, but I’ve hated the job since day one and have been dragging my ass ever since. Finally I have a reason to leave this county and head south to Pittsburgh, where I spend most of my weekend time. Good riddance to a horrible, unhealthy and incompatible job and environment.
One of the things I’ve been doing lately is reading long articles about David Foster Wallace, both in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Here is someone who accomplished things I only dream of doing, and it wasn’t good enough for him. He suffered from the same self-doubt and work-related criticism that I do and he had a brain full of knowledge on subjects I’m barely even aware exist. If he couldn’t make it, what kind of person am I to even dream of doing so? He studied at Amherst and Harvard, while I drank my way out of a state college and spent my twenties working nights on a landfill. If he had such difficulty and misery, what makes me think I can do any better, or even come close?
On the other hand, there are people like Stephenie Meyer whose work flies off the shelves and into the hands of children and adults at a rate so quickly you’d swear there were deals made with Satan going on. If a woman who never read a vampire book or watched a vampire movie can write a bestselling vampire series then there’s still a chance for me, right? Despite reading the first three books and being shocked at how emotionally and socially stunted the main characters are, I have to admit they are popular. But is popular even what I want?
I think, right now, all I want to do is be read. And in order to do that, I have to go beyond the rough draft and into a place where I am very, very uncomfortable. I’m going to have to revise and continue working, though I have no idea what I should be doing. Proofreading is no problem, but adding and subtracting entire chapters and characters is something so alien and painful to imagine to me that I put it off as long as I can, much like I did exercise when I was depressed. I don’t think I need to explain what that ended up doing to me.
I’m not even sure what the meaning of this passage is. I suppose in part I want to let anyone who reads this blog know that I’m still alive, but at the same time I want to go deeper into explaining myself and my motivations for things. I want other people to know just how much I doubt myself every day, and I want to find out if other people do the same. When I pick up most books I see the finished product for what it is, a book, and as I flip through it I never stop to wonder how much work the author put into it or how many revisions it went through. I suppose I only ever think of someone suffering self-doubt and hatred of their own material when that writer is me. And I can barely even refer to myself as a writer at this stage, seeing as I’ve only ever produced a few short stories and novel rough drafts.
On the outside, reading for pleasure has given way to film watching. 2008 was the Year of the Fifty Book Challenge, and I ended the year with sixty-one new reads. This year I’m challenging myself to see more than one hundred films, on DVD specifically, and I’m up to twenty-four so far. I’ll finish the twenty-fifth today or tomorrow. I’ve been breaking my movies down to forty-minute chunks to watch while I’m running on the elliptical every day.
I should be writing every day for hours at a time, seeing how I lost my job two weeks ago. Six years at Waste Management and I’m lost in a “restructuring.” For some people this could have been a catastrophic loss, but I’ve hated the job since day one and have been dragging my ass ever since. Finally I have a reason to leave this county and head south to Pittsburgh, where I spend most of my weekend time. Good riddance to a horrible, unhealthy and incompatible job and environment.
One of the things I’ve been doing lately is reading long articles about David Foster Wallace, both in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Here is someone who accomplished things I only dream of doing, and it wasn’t good enough for him. He suffered from the same self-doubt and work-related criticism that I do and he had a brain full of knowledge on subjects I’m barely even aware exist. If he couldn’t make it, what kind of person am I to even dream of doing so? He studied at Amherst and Harvard, while I drank my way out of a state college and spent my twenties working nights on a landfill. If he had such difficulty and misery, what makes me think I can do any better, or even come close?
On the other hand, there are people like Stephenie Meyer whose work flies off the shelves and into the hands of children and adults at a rate so quickly you’d swear there were deals made with Satan going on. If a woman who never read a vampire book or watched a vampire movie can write a bestselling vampire series then there’s still a chance for me, right? Despite reading the first three books and being shocked at how emotionally and socially stunted the main characters are, I have to admit they are popular. But is popular even what I want?
I think, right now, all I want to do is be read. And in order to do that, I have to go beyond the rough draft and into a place where I am very, very uncomfortable. I’m going to have to revise and continue working, though I have no idea what I should be doing. Proofreading is no problem, but adding and subtracting entire chapters and characters is something so alien and painful to imagine to me that I put it off as long as I can, much like I did exercise when I was depressed. I don’t think I need to explain what that ended up doing to me.
I’m not even sure what the meaning of this passage is. I suppose in part I want to let anyone who reads this blog know that I’m still alive, but at the same time I want to go deeper into explaining myself and my motivations for things. I want other people to know just how much I doubt myself every day, and I want to find out if other people do the same. When I pick up most books I see the finished product for what it is, a book, and as I flip through it I never stop to wonder how much work the author put into it or how many revisions it went through. I suppose I only ever think of someone suffering self-doubt and hatred of their own material when that writer is me. And I can barely even refer to myself as a writer at this stage, seeing as I’ve only ever produced a few short stories and novel rough drafts.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
The Usual Difficulties
A new project, a new set of problems, it seems.
While Eric is reading my (very) rough draft, I’ve been mulling over a new long-fiction concept. At first I was supposed to be writing a winter-themed short story for a friend’s upcoming podcast, but once I realized that this was something much too long for an audio format I resigned myself to having come up with yet another novel idea.
I’m still not all that great with novels.
While some people can apparently come up with a legion of characters, a main plot and a half dozen subplots with ease, I struggle to keep one story line coherent. I’m always afraid that I’m going to end up sounding ridiculous or implausible with my plots and dialogue. I’m beginning to come to the point where I don’t care about the end result and plow forward with a feverish determination, but I still have enough self-doubt that it’s holding me back.
I want to get started on this immediately. One of my biggest fears is the loss of interest in a project, and time and time again I’ve been on fire for an idea only to stop caring after a few short weeks. Now I immediately begin to panic when I don’t set upon a project at the first thought of it, worried that I’ll somehow lose the passion somewhere along the way. I’m fairly certain this line of thinking was responsible for my eighteen-day draft of Teahouse, especially the last two days of it. All I could do was type, screaming silently in my head, “Get it out! Finish it! Don’t stop until you see The End!” I was so worried that I’d quit caring, even that close to the end, that I had to push the story out despite the fact that I could have spent a bit more time working on the details.
Thanks to my “motivation issues,” I now have two hundred pages of plot with no trace of subplot, character details or emotion. Nice.
Here I am now, with another semi-formed story, feeling the urge to push my way through this yet terrified of screwing it up or leaving it half-finished. I suppose I could go back to something I really have left sitting unfinished, but all I can think about right now is this story.
On a related note, Eric is reading my draft of Teahouse now. I told him, jokingly, that he should change his away message to “Reading my girlfriend’s first novel. Don’t bother me.” I didn’t think he’d actually do it, but he did. Something that small and insignificant made me feel giddy.
Here’s hoping the book stands up to some criticism. I’m very nervous waiting for his reaction to it.
While Eric is reading my (very) rough draft, I’ve been mulling over a new long-fiction concept. At first I was supposed to be writing a winter-themed short story for a friend’s upcoming podcast, but once I realized that this was something much too long for an audio format I resigned myself to having come up with yet another novel idea.
I’m still not all that great with novels.
While some people can apparently come up with a legion of characters, a main plot and a half dozen subplots with ease, I struggle to keep one story line coherent. I’m always afraid that I’m going to end up sounding ridiculous or implausible with my plots and dialogue. I’m beginning to come to the point where I don’t care about the end result and plow forward with a feverish determination, but I still have enough self-doubt that it’s holding me back.
I want to get started on this immediately. One of my biggest fears is the loss of interest in a project, and time and time again I’ve been on fire for an idea only to stop caring after a few short weeks. Now I immediately begin to panic when I don’t set upon a project at the first thought of it, worried that I’ll somehow lose the passion somewhere along the way. I’m fairly certain this line of thinking was responsible for my eighteen-day draft of Teahouse, especially the last two days of it. All I could do was type, screaming silently in my head, “Get it out! Finish it! Don’t stop until you see The End!” I was so worried that I’d quit caring, even that close to the end, that I had to push the story out despite the fact that I could have spent a bit more time working on the details.
Thanks to my “motivation issues,” I now have two hundred pages of plot with no trace of subplot, character details or emotion. Nice.
Here I am now, with another semi-formed story, feeling the urge to push my way through this yet terrified of screwing it up or leaving it half-finished. I suppose I could go back to something I really have left sitting unfinished, but all I can think about right now is this story.
On a related note, Eric is reading my draft of Teahouse now. I told him, jokingly, that he should change his away message to “Reading my girlfriend’s first novel. Don’t bother me.” I didn’t think he’d actually do it, but he did. Something that small and insignificant made me feel giddy.
Here’s hoping the book stands up to some criticism. I’m very nervous waiting for his reaction to it.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Fifty-Two Thousand Words, Two Hundred Pages
Well, the rough draft of In The Teahouse is finished. I came home from work yesterday with a fire lit under me and wrote about seven thousand words, finishing up with an hour left before bedtime. I spent this afternoon getting the formatting down, exporting the pieces into one .doc file using an awesome piece of writing software , Scrivener, that I've been using for a year or two now. I've never compiled so many pieces into one document before, though.
My first novel-length rough draft. This is a milestone, right?
Now comes the hard part, something that I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading - editing. Now, editing other people’s work comes easy for me. People ask me all the time to go over things they’ve written: papers, correspondence, memos, etc. No big deal. But now the tables are turning and I feel like I’m giving a lump of my own flesh out to people to hack apart and put under a microscope.
This almost feels more invasive than my yearly exam. Almost.
I need this, though. I know I need it, and I want it, but I hope the people I choose to read this end up helping. Nothing could be worse than giving out two hundred pages of direct imagination-to-paper daydreaming and getting nothing but one-word or one-sentence replies in return.
The way I see it, I’ve received rejection slips before, even the cruel form letters that editors use when they’re flooded but always end up seeming more like a personal insult than a convenience. If I can get through those, I suppose I can get through this. It’s what I need to make the second draft plumper and smoother, and unless I plan on putting this in a manuscript box and hiding it in my closet (which I don’t) it’s going to be touched on by other people’s eyes at one point or another.
Might as well be now.
In the mean time, I’m going to pick up some books on revision and plotting and go from there.
I am so glad to be able to read other people’s fiction again, too. As soon as I started this project I was hit with cravings for at least ten different books. Putting them off was agony.
My first novel-length rough draft. This is a milestone, right?
Now comes the hard part, something that I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading - editing. Now, editing other people’s work comes easy for me. People ask me all the time to go over things they’ve written: papers, correspondence, memos, etc. No big deal. But now the tables are turning and I feel like I’m giving a lump of my own flesh out to people to hack apart and put under a microscope.
This almost feels more invasive than my yearly exam. Almost.
I need this, though. I know I need it, and I want it, but I hope the people I choose to read this end up helping. Nothing could be worse than giving out two hundred pages of direct imagination-to-paper daydreaming and getting nothing but one-word or one-sentence replies in return.
The way I see it, I’ve received rejection slips before, even the cruel form letters that editors use when they’re flooded but always end up seeming more like a personal insult than a convenience. If I can get through those, I suppose I can get through this. It’s what I need to make the second draft plumper and smoother, and unless I plan on putting this in a manuscript box and hiding it in my closet (which I don’t) it’s going to be touched on by other people’s eyes at one point or another.
Might as well be now.
In the mean time, I’m going to pick up some books on revision and plotting and go from there.
I am so glad to be able to read other people’s fiction again, too. As soon as I started this project I was hit with cravings for at least ten different books. Putting them off was agony.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Thirty Thousand and Ninety
... and I still haven’t reached that sense of accomplishment yet. I suppose it will only show itself once I’ve finished the entire rough draft.
Part of me wants to stop and cheer at the progress I’ve made and perhaps sit back and bask a while but a much larger part keeps getting in the way. It’s not impressed and doesn’t want to slow down.
“You realize,” it says, “that you still have a bunch of action to write, including at least one more death, and still haven’t come close to the climax or denouement, right? That’s when you relax, and not a moment sooner.”
Party pooper.
I think part of my anxiety is how much I value this story and how much I want it to be told in complete form, regardless how rough it is. I loved last year’s story, but once I hit 50k I left it alone. It’s still unfinished today, which is something I’m really not proud of. I think writing an entire rough draft means more to me than the actual word count. Having a manuscript with a cover page and a final page with a THE END near the bottom is really my goal here, not the 50k. Until I get there I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax.
I bought a nice binder at Staples today and pulled my three-hole punch out of retirement. I have all my completed chapters within reach now, so I won’t need to worry about mixing up facts, dates, characters, etc anymore. That’s kind of a relief.
On the bright side, I’ve estimated that I have close to 100 pages of a rough draft in bound and readable form now, should anyone want to step up to the test audience plate any time soon.
Part of me wants to stop and cheer at the progress I’ve made and perhaps sit back and bask a while but a much larger part keeps getting in the way. It’s not impressed and doesn’t want to slow down.
“You realize,” it says, “that you still have a bunch of action to write, including at least one more death, and still haven’t come close to the climax or denouement, right? That’s when you relax, and not a moment sooner.”
Party pooper.
I think part of my anxiety is how much I value this story and how much I want it to be told in complete form, regardless how rough it is. I loved last year’s story, but once I hit 50k I left it alone. It’s still unfinished today, which is something I’m really not proud of. I think writing an entire rough draft means more to me than the actual word count. Having a manuscript with a cover page and a final page with a THE END near the bottom is really my goal here, not the 50k. Until I get there I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax.
I bought a nice binder at Staples today and pulled my three-hole punch out of retirement. I have all my completed chapters within reach now, so I won’t need to worry about mixing up facts, dates, characters, etc anymore. That’s kind of a relief.
On the bright side, I’ve estimated that I have close to 100 pages of a rough draft in bound and readable form now, should anyone want to step up to the test audience plate any time soon.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Twenty-Four Thousand and Twenty-Nine
I’m almost at the halfway mark, and I’m on track as far as the outline goes. Not too shabby.
I’m beginning to wonder how the second half of the novel will play out, especially in the pacing department. Every time I start to second guess myself, or criticize myself for what I’ve written so far, I stop and remind myself that this is just the rough draft and that any and all mistakes I make are going to be smoothed out or outright eliminated during editing. I could double the word count if I needed to, add characters and scenes if they end up being necessary.
I don’t think they will be, though. I think I’m worrying over what’s going to amount to being a lot of easily correctible small stuff.
Tomorrow I return to my job and the real world and leave full time novel writing behind. I’m a bit antsy over that, and I may end up taking my laptop with me to work on In the Teahouse on my lunch break. I haven’t decided yet.
I’m exhausted. I think I’ve done nearly five thousand words this afternoon. Goodnight, book.
I’m beginning to wonder how the second half of the novel will play out, especially in the pacing department. Every time I start to second guess myself, or criticize myself for what I’ve written so far, I stop and remind myself that this is just the rough draft and that any and all mistakes I make are going to be smoothed out or outright eliminated during editing. I could double the word count if I needed to, add characters and scenes if they end up being necessary.
I don’t think they will be, though. I think I’m worrying over what’s going to amount to being a lot of easily correctible small stuff.
Tomorrow I return to my job and the real world and leave full time novel writing behind. I’m a bit antsy over that, and I may end up taking my laptop with me to work on In the Teahouse on my lunch break. I haven’t decided yet.
I’m exhausted. I think I’ve done nearly five thousand words this afternoon. Goodnight, book.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Thirteen Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty
I’m starting to suspect my plotting may be off a bit. Two deaths and two very shaken survivors and I’m only slightly above the twenty-five percent mark. I still have quite a bit of conflict to lay down but I’m beginning to worry that a reader might be overwhelmed with the amount of deaths within such a small cast. I’m halfway tempted to introduce a bunch of throwaway characters and additional plot but I’d really rather not.
I think I’m going to keep the story going the way it was outlined and worry about any plot holes or overwhelming parts once I get to rewriting. I really shouldn’t start second guessing myself at this point but it comes almost automatically anymore.
I finally bought my own (used) copy of the book every writer and wannabe writer seems to own, bird by bird, and I’m starting to get the impression that all writers end up having the same fiction writing-related neuroses that I have, especially with getting started and/or entire rough drafts. Everybody seems to be susceptible to worry and self-doubt, which has been leading me to believe that it’s not such a big deal after all. We’re all just too melodramatic for our own good, that’s all.
So, that’s it. Sticking to the 10-scene outline, and if I need to I’ll add, delete or rearrange later. The same theory applies to fact-checking. There’s going to be some IT-related stuff that I’m going to have to consult Eric about sooner or later, especially in regards to cell phone graphics capabilities and whether or not movable in-game graphics can be done in watercolors.
Four chapters, twenty-seven percent completion, five days. Not too shabby. And it’s readable, which is a serious bonus for high-speed rough drafts.
I think I’m going to keep the story going the way it was outlined and worry about any plot holes or overwhelming parts once I get to rewriting. I really shouldn’t start second guessing myself at this point but it comes almost automatically anymore.
I finally bought my own (used) copy of the book every writer and wannabe writer seems to own, bird by bird, and I’m starting to get the impression that all writers end up having the same fiction writing-related neuroses that I have, especially with getting started and/or entire rough drafts. Everybody seems to be susceptible to worry and self-doubt, which has been leading me to believe that it’s not such a big deal after all. We’re all just too melodramatic for our own good, that’s all.
So, that’s it. Sticking to the 10-scene outline, and if I need to I’ll add, delete or rearrange later. The same theory applies to fact-checking. There’s going to be some IT-related stuff that I’m going to have to consult Eric about sooner or later, especially in regards to cell phone graphics capabilities and whether or not movable in-game graphics can be done in watercolors.
Four chapters, twenty-seven percent completion, five days. Not too shabby. And it’s readable, which is a serious bonus for high-speed rough drafts.
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