taking stock
Nov. 12th, 2004 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I just wrote a lengthy post over on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
treigylgweith about how far the writing process has taken me this month.
But to sum up (and, true to my form, the summary is longer than the original):
I'm getting there with this novel. I think I can finish, structurally, in another three to five days. I'm hoping for the shorter time.
I will then begin preliminary edits. I may tone down the porn, for example. I don't want to firmly commit this novel to any one genre. I think it has too much substance to be a cheap pulp romance novel, but perhaps not enough substance to be a serious historical novel. It's primarily about a relationship between two people.The rest is just details. i can make it heavier on the porn, lighter on the porn, heavier on the emotions, lighter, heavier on the history, lighter, heavier on the action, lighter (get the idea?). That's unimportant. What's important now is structure.
I want to finish a polished, coherent first draft before Thanksgiving. I want to print it out.
If anyone reading this wants a copy, I will e-mail Word, PDF, or .txt documents to anyone who wants a copy of the first draft to read, all in one place, edited, and not posted piecemeal in a friends-protected livejournal.
I will print out a copy, perhaps several, with wide margins, generous spacing, and plenty of room for notes. I will annotate it on the ride home. I will then give it to my family members and ask them to read it. (I may use Post-Its or very bold headers to illuminate the highlights-- if they don't want to read the whole thing, I'll point out which chapters are important and they can read the abridged version. i will do this for the emailed copies as well.)
I also plan on including a list of questions for readers to answer for each chapter-- I've seen that in fanfic beta forums and the people with the questions are way, way more successful at getting good feedback. I'll have specific things I want to know. I'll make sure I ask those. i won't just ask whether it was good because I won't get much I can use, without the poor beta reader having worked his/her tail off to figure out what I need to hear.
I will then walk away from the project for at least a week. I have a nonfiction project I have to work on over Thanksgiving, that has to be finished asap so Katy can see it before she goes to Iraq. I also have some serious puppy-cuddling to do (and sister-cuddling) over Thanksgiving.
I'll come back to the novel once I've got a collection of annotated first drafts to look at. (I will be working when I come back from Thanksgiving, one way or another-- I may be on a street corner, but I'll be working, because I have to be. I can't really afford to take that time either. But I have to.)
And then I'll write the novel's second draft, having seen people's responses to it and gotten some idea of the parts that only worked in my head. (That's the big thing preliminary readers are for.)
And then I'll be done, and can start querying publishers and agents. I may well have to rewrite it to their specifications. I'm fine with that. I'd be ecstatic if I got far enough that they had specifications. I feel strongly that I have it in me to be a published author, that i have some sort of spark that makes my writing worth reading. I want to prove that I'm not just conceited for thinking that. But I don't thinK i'm God's gift to the writing world. I know there are better writers than me. But I think I'm Good Enough, and that can get you everywhere in this world if you have determination. Which I have lacked. I no longer do. I am ready at this point to have the writing that means so much to me mean something in the eyes of the rest of the world.
But no matter what happens, I will have finished a novel. And that's what's important to me, right now, at 25, rapidly approaching the 14th anniversary of the date I decided I was Going To Be A Writer. (I started my first novel on January 1, 1991.)
So. Anyone who's interested in reading, drop me a comment. I can be emailed through livejournal (username@livejournal.com) if you want to send me your address so I can mail you a hard copy. That may take much longer, but I'm not concrete on my deadlines anyway so there may well be no hurry. I'll try and be smart and include a prepaid addressed return envelope too, like the pros do. But I dunno for sure how organized I'm going to have the energy to be. This is ambition, at this point. All I can offer readers is my conviction that it'll be an entertaining story to read. i can't even promise reciprocity; I may be working two jobs for a while and i have a bunch more novels to write besides that nonfiction piece.
But that's what there is.
I hope now that I've publicly said this that I wasn't smoking crack and I can follow through on this.
treigylgweith about how far the writing process has taken me this month.But to sum up (and, true to my form, the summary is longer than the original):
I'm getting there with this novel. I think I can finish, structurally, in another three to five days. I'm hoping for the shorter time.
I will then begin preliminary edits. I may tone down the porn, for example. I don't want to firmly commit this novel to any one genre. I think it has too much substance to be a cheap pulp romance novel, but perhaps not enough substance to be a serious historical novel. It's primarily about a relationship between two people.The rest is just details. i can make it heavier on the porn, lighter on the porn, heavier on the emotions, lighter, heavier on the history, lighter, heavier on the action, lighter (get the idea?). That's unimportant. What's important now is structure.
I want to finish a polished, coherent first draft before Thanksgiving. I want to print it out.
If anyone reading this wants a copy, I will e-mail Word, PDF, or .txt documents to anyone who wants a copy of the first draft to read, all in one place, edited, and not posted piecemeal in a friends-protected livejournal.
I will print out a copy, perhaps several, with wide margins, generous spacing, and plenty of room for notes. I will annotate it on the ride home. I will then give it to my family members and ask them to read it. (I may use Post-Its or very bold headers to illuminate the highlights-- if they don't want to read the whole thing, I'll point out which chapters are important and they can read the abridged version. i will do this for the emailed copies as well.)
I also plan on including a list of questions for readers to answer for each chapter-- I've seen that in fanfic beta forums and the people with the questions are way, way more successful at getting good feedback. I'll have specific things I want to know. I'll make sure I ask those. i won't just ask whether it was good because I won't get much I can use, without the poor beta reader having worked his/her tail off to figure out what I need to hear.
I will then walk away from the project for at least a week. I have a nonfiction project I have to work on over Thanksgiving, that has to be finished asap so Katy can see it before she goes to Iraq. I also have some serious puppy-cuddling to do (and sister-cuddling) over Thanksgiving.
I'll come back to the novel once I've got a collection of annotated first drafts to look at. (I will be working when I come back from Thanksgiving, one way or another-- I may be on a street corner, but I'll be working, because I have to be. I can't really afford to take that time either. But I have to.)
And then I'll write the novel's second draft, having seen people's responses to it and gotten some idea of the parts that only worked in my head. (That's the big thing preliminary readers are for.)
And then I'll be done, and can start querying publishers and agents. I may well have to rewrite it to their specifications. I'm fine with that. I'd be ecstatic if I got far enough that they had specifications. I feel strongly that I have it in me to be a published author, that i have some sort of spark that makes my writing worth reading. I want to prove that I'm not just conceited for thinking that. But I don't thinK i'm God's gift to the writing world. I know there are better writers than me. But I think I'm Good Enough, and that can get you everywhere in this world if you have determination. Which I have lacked. I no longer do. I am ready at this point to have the writing that means so much to me mean something in the eyes of the rest of the world.
But no matter what happens, I will have finished a novel. And that's what's important to me, right now, at 25, rapidly approaching the 14th anniversary of the date I decided I was Going To Be A Writer. (I started my first novel on January 1, 1991.)
So. Anyone who's interested in reading, drop me a comment. I can be emailed through livejournal (username@livejournal.com) if you want to send me your address so I can mail you a hard copy. That may take much longer, but I'm not concrete on my deadlines anyway so there may well be no hurry. I'll try and be smart and include a prepaid addressed return envelope too, like the pros do. But I dunno for sure how organized I'm going to have the energy to be. This is ambition, at this point. All I can offer readers is my conviction that it'll be an entertaining story to read. i can't even promise reciprocity; I may be working two jobs for a while and i have a bunch more novels to write besides that nonfiction piece.
But that's what there is.
I hope now that I've publicly said this that I wasn't smoking crack and I can follow through on this.
