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

[minyan.livejournal.com]

My instinct would be to be wary of plotting something extensively and then trying to hold it to a plot — but most people reading my stuff have pointed out that I can't find a plot with a GIS unit, so you takes your choice :-) I tend to start with some idea and do whatever seems to be the next bit. I also have to write a fair amount before I know what the plot is, and then I work back to it. I have a short story that's gone through two drafts, and I've just figured out what the conflict in it is. I'd not only written my first draft of the book but ignored it for a semester and reread the whole thing before I figured out one of the largest plot elements in it. Most of this revision has been trying to get all the plot points roughly onto the time line.

That doesn't mean they come out of nowhere, exactly. It means I hadn't realized yet what I'd already been pointing at. I have these odd moments of wait, if that chapter's about her father instead of her grandmother, the whole damn plot makes a lot more sense. I've written scenes entirely out of sequence and realized two hundred pages later, when I went to fit them in, that I'd set them up to be where I wanted them without knowing it. It's weird, but comforting, sort of the Connie Willis model of writing.

I think what that comes down to... sometimes you gotta hunt the bird stump in order to let the butler speak, or wear yourself out so you can tell your dreams in a boat scene on the thames :-) If a scene is boring you, there's no harm in skipping it (I'm swiping this idea from Tom Perotta) at least in the first pass. If you really get into writing something, there's a very goo chance it'll be something you need, even if not where it is now or in this form. Passion's contagious. You probably can't judge the thing as a whole until you've written your way through it once and ignored it for awhile. Unlike me, you've already done this whole exercise brilliantly and know your own pacing... I did need to plot mine out, but I needed to find my way through it once first.

And by the way, congratulations! Scuffle and dustcough, here you come:-) *hug* Most of us are a lot more imaginary writers than you, my dear. You're a full-fledged, natural, whole, integral and positive one!

[stealthmuffin.livejournal.com]

Yeah...It helps to remember the first drafts of Spiral Hunt, which, well, sucked. Pretty hard. This too shall pass, and the identical kindly old ladies will probably get combined into one (though I'll have to figure out how to work in her horrible death now...). Thanks.