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conundrum resolved
Jul. 28th, 2008 12:17 am...and forward we go again.
Arcx
+10k revised/new since Thursday
18,000 of 110,000
I am, of course, totally kidding myself that this is going to come in at 110k, but I figure if I aim for that maybe I can manage to land shy of 125k. And I have to say that so far I'm much more pleased with this than I was in the very-bad-zero-draft I'm mercilessly cannibalizing for parts.
Writing (at least the early drafts) is a lot like getting lost driving around an unfamiliar city. You're pretty sure you made a wrong turn, but you think it's only a matter of a block or two before you get back on track. Only, you keep getting further and further lost and you start taking random turns, each more panic-driven than the last, as you get this sick, sinking feeling in your stomach because you know you're so turned around that eventually you are just going to have to go all the way back to the beginning and start over. I let myself get to 80k last time before I admitted defeat, so I'm determined to be much more sensitive to that feeling of having taken a wrong turn (or even just a wrong step) and correct it before I've gotten too far lost.
Final drafts, on the other hand, are when you know your way from beginning to end of your route blindfolded, and the challenge has become to see how smoothly you can time the lights and game the traffic on the way there.
My conundrum was that I had one character ("N") who really wanted to go to place A. And the ship she is on (and its captain and crew) really want to go to place B. And I, as an author, need them BOTH to get their way. So the key was figuring out some way that they could manage to get to both places without long tangents, side-trips, or patently obvious plot-finagling.
Now, the solution I found (which will work very well, I think) throws off a fair bit of the more immediate action that I'd already written, so I'm going to have to entirely scrap at least one and possibly two chapters before they sync up again to a common place. That's fine, they weren't very good chapters to start with, but it's going to take another day or two of thinking so I know how I want the new bits structured.
I'm not in a hurry, at least. It helps that I'm fairly resigned to the idea that I'm never going to sell one of these damned things anyhow, so writing them has become mostly an exercise in stubborn refusal to give up and go home. Also, I enjoy writing them in a sick, masochistic way. (-:
Arcx
+10k revised/new since Thursday
18,000 of 110,000
I am, of course, totally kidding myself that this is going to come in at 110k, but I figure if I aim for that maybe I can manage to land shy of 125k. And I have to say that so far I'm much more pleased with this than I was in the very-bad-zero-draft I'm mercilessly cannibalizing for parts.
Writing (at least the early drafts) is a lot like getting lost driving around an unfamiliar city. You're pretty sure you made a wrong turn, but you think it's only a matter of a block or two before you get back on track. Only, you keep getting further and further lost and you start taking random turns, each more panic-driven than the last, as you get this sick, sinking feeling in your stomach because you know you're so turned around that eventually you are just going to have to go all the way back to the beginning and start over. I let myself get to 80k last time before I admitted defeat, so I'm determined to be much more sensitive to that feeling of having taken a wrong turn (or even just a wrong step) and correct it before I've gotten too far lost.
Final drafts, on the other hand, are when you know your way from beginning to end of your route blindfolded, and the challenge has become to see how smoothly you can time the lights and game the traffic on the way there.
My conundrum was that I had one character ("N") who really wanted to go to place A. And the ship she is on (and its captain and crew) really want to go to place B. And I, as an author, need them BOTH to get their way. So the key was figuring out some way that they could manage to get to both places without long tangents, side-trips, or patently obvious plot-finagling.
Now, the solution I found (which will work very well, I think) throws off a fair bit of the more immediate action that I'd already written, so I'm going to have to entirely scrap at least one and possibly two chapters before they sync up again to a common place. That's fine, they weren't very good chapters to start with, but it's going to take another day or two of thinking so I know how I want the new bits structured.
I'm not in a hurry, at least. It helps that I'm fairly resigned to the idea that I'm never going to sell one of these damned things anyhow, so writing them has become mostly an exercise in stubborn refusal to give up and go home. Also, I enjoy writing them in a sick, masochistic way. (-:
