I kind of enjoyed it. No, I did enjoy it.
Now, my writing mostly goes into fiction. Probably a quarter of a million words in the quest to write a 100K word novel. I finally finished the first draft. (155K. Cut to 130K. There will be much more cutting.)
I feel faintly sad realizing that I could have burbled on about the novel here and celebrated that first-draft-finishing here.
But I suspect nobody's "here" any more--that is, I suspect that the lovely people who read and commented on my very intermittent posts long ago removed me from their Follow lists, because, well that blog is dead. Was dead. Maybe no longer dead?
Anybody there?
Howdy?
Now I go to Wikimedia Commons and find a cat picture. Because that is how I blog.
Oh my goodness, massive congratulations on the first draft and the round of editing! Cutting words like that is HARD. I would love to read more about your process as you go. When I was younger I Nanowrimo'd for a couple of years, but I've hardly written fiction at all as an adult. It was such a huge part of what I did as a kid and teen, but somehow I've been holding myself back, reading and researching and never really letting myself sink into the vulnerability of it, for most of a decade now. It feels like there's no one story bursting out of me, just tons of little notes and ideas that could be interesting but that I can't imagine stretching the vastness of a novel (I did enjoy playwriting for a couple of years). Oh well, at least I'm still writing often with the blog. I do want to get back to writing fiction eventually, and your work on this inspires me!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for commenting!
ReplyDeleteThis novel happened because it snuck up on me. :) My original plan was to just Write Bits Of Fiction, and after several strategies failed to inspire a habit, I tried a strategy of writing high-emotion scenes without worrying about the motivation that led to the scene. (Why is Character X desperate to get Y accomplished? Not my problem yet. Just write a bite of fiction.)
Then I kept writing more high-emotion scenes in the same setting with the same characters. Turns out emotion usually means conflict. Conflict usually means plot. So each scene had plot tendrils reaching out. So by starting with what I enjoy (the emotion) I made progress in the area where I'm lacking (plot.)
Then, SIX YEARS and hundreds of thousands of words on the scrap heap later (not deleted. I never delete.), a coherent if too-long first draft. Apparently I can only plan the novel after the majority of the novel is written, however illogical that sounds and is. :)
And, yes, vulnerability. That ties to the high emotion. Before this, I was writing shiny smooth banter scenes, which just didn't engage, though they stretched my dialogue-writing muscles. Emotion/vulnerability got this novel growing.
(Apparently I need to fix my own commenting. That was me. :))
ReplyDeleteThat's such a cool method for writing. I might totally copy that and start writing little Bits of Fiction like that too sometime, because that's brilliant. There's definitely plenty to draw on for stand-alone high-emotion scenes when you're not worried about what happens next. Congratulations on the progress and best of luck going forward!
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