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rj_andersonHit the 40,000 word mark last night. More than halfway there!
The problem with writing a first draft in just over a month is that while it's very useful for reassuring you that the story does, in fact, hang together, there is a certain discouraging aspect of turning out substandard prose day after day after day.
I keep thinking wistfully that if I could just write one really good -- not perfect, but good -- scene, something that makes me feel happy and proud to have written it... but there are no such scenes in the book, not yet. No time for polishing at this stage, no chance to go back and verify that the pacing's right and the emotions ring true and the mood is consistent, none of the things that elevate a novel from Action to Story. As Laurie King put it in her recent blog entry on revision (which is excellent by the way, and well worth reading), the first draft is really more like a 300-page outline. And useful as they may be, nobody really wants to read an outline.
So here I go again, off to the sausage grinder, squishing out words. Yay?
The problem with writing a first draft in just over a month is that while it's very useful for reassuring you that the story does, in fact, hang together, there is a certain discouraging aspect of turning out substandard prose day after day after day.
I keep thinking wistfully that if I could just write one really good -- not perfect, but good -- scene, something that makes me feel happy and proud to have written it... but there are no such scenes in the book, not yet. No time for polishing at this stage, no chance to go back and verify that the pacing's right and the emotions ring true and the mood is consistent, none of the things that elevate a novel from Action to Story. As Laurie King put it in her recent blog entry on revision (which is excellent by the way, and well worth reading), the first draft is really more like a 300-page outline. And useful as they may be, nobody really wants to read an outline.
So here I go again, off to the sausage grinder, squishing out words. Yay?
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