Of This and Other Worlds

After struggling with my writing for the last six months, I've come to the conclusion that even though I learned a few useful things from First Draft in 30 Days, overall it's done me a great deal more harm than good.

( And this is why... )

So I'm getting off the wordcount bandwagon. From now on, my only goal is to write for at least two hours every day, and quit when I'm reasonably satisfied with what I've got, whether it's 1000 words or 500 or only 50. After all, despite what all the efficiency experts say, it's always worked for me before. I wrote my first novel There Came a Traveller (120K) in six months, the first version of Knife (85K) in eight months, and the original Darkness and Light trilogy (110K) in about a year (including the gaps between, when I wasn't even sure there would be another story let alone how long it would be). To me that proves that even if I'm "wasting" a lot of effort polishing paragraphs and scenes to a high gloss only to throw them out on the next revision, it can't be holding me back that much. So forget other people's ideas of efficiency, I'm going back to what works for me.

And there's one thing I've really been missing, the thing that has always kept me motivated and encouraged me to keep writing when I'd otherwise be tempted to slack off or quit -- but I'll save that for tomorrow's post.

Since mid-January I have had two major illnesses -- one 24-hour bout that left me weak for days afterward, followed closely by the Flu O'Doom, which I am just now getting over two weeks later. I am tired of being tired, and sick of being sick, and generally ready to stop coughing now, thanks. And unsurprisingly, all this has put a crimp in my First Draft in 30 Days plans, leaving me stuck somewhere in the middle of Days 7-13 (Research).

I must confess, too, that this is one of my least favorite phases of Wiesner's outlining process. There are things in this section which bore me to fiery tears -- fact sheets ("there are twelve patrol officers in the precinct") and timelines and such. She also suggests making a list of your various characters' dialogue quirks, which is giving me flashbacks to Redwall with all the accents spelled out phonetically (noooooo), or Fflewddur Fflam saying "Great Belin!" every six paragraphs throughout the entire Chronicles of Prydain.

So I am cheating on Wiesner with Randy Ingermanson at the moment, and trying to decide which method I really want to go steady with. But since I haven't actually done anything new for about two and a half weeks, I should probably, y'know, make some forward progress first.

There is an outstanding problem with Indigo, however. It involves an Evil Conspiracy on the part of all my characters to drive me insane. ( Like this... )

However, my new objective is to take a page from novel_in_90 and churn out 750 words of something every day, whether it's plot notes or character interviews or (gasp!) actual writing. So I think I'll go and do that now.

As you have probably already noticed, Day Five in First Draft in 30 Days and Day Five on the actual calendar are... not so much in alignment. But I am still ahead of deadline, or at least I haven't missed my deadline yet. Remember I'm planning to do this in 90 days (max.) instead of 30, so you can do the math.

I have managed to plow through my Character Sketches, Setting Sketches and Research List, and today I finally broke through my mental block on the Plot Sketch. Now I am working on the Summary Outline -- a sort of essay detailing as much of the book as I can come up with at this point, from beginning to end (and allowing for any number of gaps in the middle, which will be filled in later).

And lo and behold, I find that I actually have a plot. It's nothing special -- "linear" would perhaps be the kindest word for it at this point, and there are elements which will require a good deal of finesse if I'm to keep them from appearing cliched and predictable. But it is at least a rough map from Point A to Point B. And I can already pick out scenes which are going to be a lot of fun to write, which gives me something to work toward and look forward to. Best of all, a character I didn't know existed until a few days ago has not only become three-dimensional, she's starting to insist on taking a significant role in the action, which surprises but does not displease me.

Still working on alternate character names -- though I do think that I'm going to end up keeping Thea after all, and it's only Dr. Tristram Leith's last name I need to change.

Okay, okay, so I got distracted and am... well, not exactly behind schedule, as I still have until the 15th to complete Day 1-6, but not exactly on schedule either.

Mind you, I don't have enough information in my head yet about the secondary characters for Indigo to write down more than a line or two for each of them, and I already wrote down all the thoughts I had on Thea and Leith on Days One and Two. Today I'm supposed to be making notes of the various settings in the book, and compiling a research list -- but I don't know yet what specific settings I'm going to need, and since the majority of the book's action takes place in a town where I lived for ten years, I'm not too worried about getting the details wrong.

On a tangential note, though -- I'm trying to decide whether to set Indigo in the actual Sudbury, or a fictional northern Ontario town just like it. The advantage of a fictionalized city is that I can rearrange landmarks and make up new ones without local readers saying, "Hey, there's no such place as Trufflehunter's on Lasalle Boulevard!" It also prevents any potential English readers being confused (since there's a Sudbury in the south of England which is manifestly different from the Canadian one).

On the other hand, it's just possible that nobody actually cares about that stuff so long as the general feel of the place and the major geographic and historical details are right. james_bow, care to weigh in on why you chose to invent Clarksbury rather than work with an actual town? It might help me to decide what I want to do. And, of course, anyone else with experience of reading or writing about contemporary places is heartily invited to comment.

***

BUT I DIGRESS AS USUAL. The actual point of this entry is to present the fruit of my distractableness, in the form of my revised hook for Knife:

( The New NEW Hook )

I've tried to include the added plot and conflict details that Miss Snark and the Snarklings requested, and I think the result is an improvement over the original, but I'm still not sure if it covers all the necessary bases. Thoughts? Suggestions? Squashy tomatoes?

ETA a totally different version of the hook, just to confuse the issue for everyone and MAKE YOU ALL SHARE MY PAIN.