31 Thursday Mar 2016
Posted in Scribbling
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Rejoice with me: I’ve finished the second draft!
Right now. At 102784 words – which is a bit too long, especially because I still have a few scenes to add. Some tight editing will be in order – but this is for… oh, the week after the next, I guess.
For now, I’ve finished the second draft! I’ve finished the second draft! I’ve finished the second draft! And so on.
As Miggs says, Ally-loyer!
16 Tuesday Feb 2016
Posted in Scribbling
Well, not this despairing…
Am I still revising?
Oh yes, with a vengeance. See the word-count thingie down there on the left? I’m past 75k words – which would be wonderful if not for the fact that I should by now have reached three quarters of my story… and I haven’t.
My first draft was overlong at over 114000 words, and when embarking on the second draft, I thought I had a lot of words to cut: scenes I didn’t need anymore, flowery descriptions, plot detours, even a couple of characters, you know the sort of things that seem great at first and then get cut. Continue reading
03 Tuesday Nov 2015
Posted in Lostintranslation, Scribbling
Because I like an artificial deadline just as well as the next writer, I embarked on my own version of NaNoWriMo. More like NaNoReMo, because I intend to wrap up my second draft by the end of the month – and I know there is a thing called NaNoReMo, and it’s not in November, but never mind.
I embarked on it with the best of intentions and, one day in, I took it into my head to behead my novel. To cut the first three chapters, and start nearly two years later.
Oh, it does make sense – but I’m still reeling a little under the shock of the amputation… Besides, the first two days of November are holidays over here – meaning relatives and guests and family dinners, and graves to tend, and precious little time for writing…
Oh well, I told myself, I’m 2200 words behind, what with one thing and another – but never fear. I’m going to recover, starting tomorrow, ain’t I?
And right then the phone rings, and it is a local director asking do I have something small, and Christmassy – with children in it – something they can have ready by the middle of December?
And clearly I have maggots in my head, because instead of telling her that no, I’m sorry, and thank you for thinking of me – but no… what do I do? I hear myself say that why, yes – I have just the thing, only it’s in English, so I’ll need a few days to translate it…
I know, I know. I’m hopeless.
So last night I sat up very, very late, and translated like mad, and will do the same tonight, and try to follow my second-draft road map while sorting through the consequences of the beheading, and hope the local historian doesn’t turn up with his next chapter just now, and rehearse how to say “No. No. No, thank you. No. No. No. No…”
I’ll let you know.
08 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in Scribbling
There I was, sitting on my first draft, and on three months’ worth of notes – sticky or otherwise – and more than a little stuck with a sense of neither being ready nor knowing too well what to do next…
Well, actually, next I began by gathering all my notes and going through them with some consistency – because it seemed like a good idea – and this proved… interesting.
On the one hand, I put together a few reasoned lists of changes to be made – and this was good. On the other hand, perhaps it was a mistake to go back to the notes from very early days, when I was trying to sort out narrative modes… I found myself grappling with the same dilemmas again, and questioning just about every choice I’d made. It wasn’t exactly cheerful work… Continue reading
06 Thursday Aug 2015
Posted in Scribbling
So I received something – something that, by and large, amounts to a specimen of the famous Good Rejection.
Not quite that – no publisher was involved – but close enough: it was a reader’s report from a high-level competition. My entry didn’t even make the long list, but the anonymous reader who sent me the report had quite a few flattering things to say about my premise, my writing, my grasp of period language, and my characters. Also, and more importantly, they had some very interesting, very punctual advice to offer about what didn’t work.
Now, all of this is going to be very, very helpful: the competition being open to unfinished work (provided it would be finished by the time the long-listed entries were called in), I submitted the beginning of my work-in-progress – the one whose word count you can see in the left column. And the fact that the word count has not changed in a few months doesn’t mean I’m not working on it. I finished the first draft at the end of May, then I let it rest for a month or so, and now I’m busy revising. I plan to begin the second draft in a couple of weeks – and this is where the advice from the reader’s report will come in handy.
The report is not long, either – perhaps some 300 words: a little, concise, punctual thing that packed encouragement, food for thought and sound, clear advice… Whoever you are, o anonymous Reader, thank you.
Also, having received it right now, as I make ready to rewrite, makes it all the more valuable because I’m at the right stage to make the best use of the advice it contains. Now the perfect timing has been a nice piece of serendipity, but it goes to show how useful a bit of feedback between drafts can be.
So, back to work – buoyed by the knowledge that there are things I have done right the first time around, and even what I didn’t has “bags of potential” – and with good advice to digest and take into account as I rewrite.
A good rejection indeed.
07 Tuesday Jul 2015
Posted in Scribbling
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So. A full month has gone by – and then some – and I have started revising my novel.
Or at least, I have started working on my second draft. Or perhaps not even that – not yet. What I have done is this:
1) I’ve started doing bits of preliminary work as learned from Holly Lisle‘s How To Revise Your Novel – big picture things like getting a clearer idea of what I want this novel to be once I’m done with it… Continue reading
