Keep digging, Watson!

[squeequeg]

In February, I started work on a new novel: big science fiction space opera with monsters and thralls and Gates and a main character who's fascinated me for years. There's a lot about it I like, and not just in the "and if I can pull this off, it'll be cool" sort of sense: I like how I worked out the history and how it'll affect current events, I like the touches of humanity in the main character even as she's irrevocably losing it, I like the kickass parts and the retired terrorist turned bureaucrat.

However, I'm about 2/5 of the way through, and have now hit the 200 page mark. (Double-spaced, Times New Roman for this draft.) This is not good. If I keep writing it out like this, it'll be bloated and huge by the time the draft is done. I'll have to cut half and rework 80% of the rest to get it to fit together.

Worse, while I seem to have shut up my inner prose editor ("So it sounds lame! Fix it next draft!"), there's a new inner voice: the plot editor. I keep running into events that are redundant, tangles that looked so nice when I outlined them but aren't holding up under their own weight, worries about whether the plot is turning into "collect-the-coupons," and so on. Half of what I've already written will have to go.

With all this banging around in my head, it's getting really hard to drive myself to slog through the next chapter, especially when I don't know whether the plot-plot-deathscene-buttkicking bit is even going to stay around.

I could keep going with this draft, vile as it's turning out to be (All together now: Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.), adding placeholders for scenes that I suspect will not make it in or that are proving too dull, and then attack the resultant work with a machete. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Or I could step back, set out what I've learned about the characters, and replot the whole damned thing. This seems like the more painful course, as it would mean discarding most of what I've done this year. But it might be less work in the long run -- or I might decide halfway through that draft, too, that it's all gone wrong.

There are two other factors affecting how I'm writing at the moment. The first is that because Spiral Hunt is in the hands of an agent who seems very enthusiastic about it (no, there's nothing concrete on those lines at the moment; it just seems to be in good hands), I'm having trouble concentrating on an entirely new work.

Also, this whole situation is unfortunately drawing strength from and feeding into my discontent over not having sold anything yet this year. I know it's not unusual to go through these dry patches, but I still feel as if not selling anything is somehow making me less of a Real Writer. As thomascantor keeps reminding me, that's bullshit. But it's such compelling bullshit. Even though I've sent out four new stories in the last few months, it's harder to see that as an accomplishment when none of those stories have sold.

I'm still writing some short stories: fleshing out one and polishing another for the writing group. (No cheese or Valhalla WWF this time around; sorry, guys.) So in that sense I'm doing okay, and I know it's not really a block. But I'd still appreciate some advice, anecdotes of the relevant or irrelevant sort, or exhortations to extract my head from my lower intestine.

(Judging by my recent posts, I tend to ask for advice a lot. Since the distilled wisdom of LiveJournal probably consists of one insightful thought, two pages of in-jokes, and a meme, this may be problematic.)

(And now I want a t-shirt that says "If I Did Everything LiveJournal Told Me To Do, I'd Be Bald, Homeless And Sterile By Now.")

Comments

[squirrelhaven.livejournal.com]

1. I've never sold anything at all. I've sent *some* stuff out, but not much, and have never. Sold. Anything. Yet I'm actually fairly confident that I'm a real writer. So for what it's worth, you're quantifiably realer than me.

2. My process with my first novel was way more recursive than linear; I'd get so far along, realize something's badly wrong, go back to the beginning and start again (with much angsting along the way), get further this time, hit a block, go back to the beginning again, etc. It's an excruciatingly inefficient way to write a book and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone whose natural working rhythms lead them in a different direction. But on the plus side, this does mean that by the time I reached the end of a draft of the novel, I could be 98% certain that things were the way I wanted them to be; I'd gotten all my plotting issues figured out, the early parts of the book had been revised so often that they were pretty tight, and the late parts of the book required less revision because I'd figured stuff out before I got there. So there are some advantages to working this way, even if it's staggeringly frustrating (and prompts a few days of depressive wallowing) every time I hit that point of SHIT, now I have to start all over again?!

3. There's also a lot to be said for the Crank-through-a-shitty-first-draft-and-fix-it-on-the-next-pass method, which I've been trying to work with on my second book. (As a caveat, I'll add that I haven't finished my second book yet, but that's less to do with my working method and more about the rest of what's been going on in my life.) Because as you already know, by the time you finish your shitty first draft, you'll know so much more about your novel and what it needs that you'll be able to improve it drastically when you revise, plus it's always easier (I find) to improve an existing draft than to create something new and brilliant.

4. Therefore, whichever way you go here is equally valid, and counts as useful progress either way. The only thing that *doesn't* count as useful progress is staying still.

5. The thing I have to tell myself ALL THE TIME when I hit these moments where everything seems equally sucky and/or problematic and I just want it to be easier: No way out but through. Go to it. Promise yourself whatever end-of-day rewards will motivate you to get work done, and beat that thing into submission.

[magdalene1.livejournal.com]

I'm in the same boat with my feature screenplay. Revise? Start over, same characters, different assumptions? Write something new?

I like the phrase "No Way Out But Through"

I've loved and adored your short works that I've read. You have an audience that is waiting for someone who writes like you to tell stories like yours. It's gonna be awesome.

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Shall we repair to our mountain fortresses to work out our next creative endeavors? Or shall we just obliterate Wyoming and replace it with a pudding vat?

[osirusbrisbane.livejournal.com]

Do not be ruled by the tyrrany of the "Or".

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Thanks. The "No way out but through" makes a hell of a lot of sense, and is a lot better than sitting here dithering, which is what I've been doing. I wonder if I could strike a balance between slogging and redoing?