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dragonlady7I reached a point last night in writing the Barbarians-Novel where I thought I had bridged a major gap and could then begin simply pasting from the earlier draft. I was able to paste several paragraphs, and then, of course, hit a snag: I had already changed something, the earlier draft was too wordy, did not have enough information and had too much dialogue.
It continues thus for ten thousand words. It needs to be rewritten, pretty much line by line. It uses all the ideas from the previous draft, but none of the words.
Bah. I'd really hoped to have something today that I could feel was Finished, but I really don't.
Well. At least I have some level of confidence in the finished draft I'm composing, which is better than mindlessly pasting in the earlier draft I dislike. And the changes are all minor tweaks, rather than major revamps. (Major revamps have plagued this work from the beginning: in Draft 1, she was a captain's daughter from a remote walled city, young and innocent to a fault, and by now she is the bastard daughter of a courtesan, herself a concubine, raised with a hard eye on the dirty ways of the world, and also is from the empire's central city and also, is black. Well, at least the hero's the same guy, although he's had his name changed three times and has subtly morphed into a far less Heroic figure.) Which means at least I'm building, rather than tearing down.
I have to admit I'm really looking forward to finishing this so I can get back to Vikings Novel, which was at least reasonably well-organized from Draft One. Actually that one had a good outline structure too. I think I might write a book after those two, called How Not To Write A Novel, and just paste in my journals about this goddamned Barbarians Novel.
Anyhow, today looks to be an unrelenting slog. If I blog too much, yell at me, because it means I'm not getting enough done.
It continues thus for ten thousand words. It needs to be rewritten, pretty much line by line. It uses all the ideas from the previous draft, but none of the words.
Bah. I'd really hoped to have something today that I could feel was Finished, but I really don't.
Well. At least I have some level of confidence in the finished draft I'm composing, which is better than mindlessly pasting in the earlier draft I dislike. And the changes are all minor tweaks, rather than major revamps. (Major revamps have plagued this work from the beginning: in Draft 1, she was a captain's daughter from a remote walled city, young and innocent to a fault, and by now she is the bastard daughter of a courtesan, herself a concubine, raised with a hard eye on the dirty ways of the world, and also is from the empire's central city and also, is black. Well, at least the hero's the same guy, although he's had his name changed three times and has subtly morphed into a far less Heroic figure.) Which means at least I'm building, rather than tearing down.
I have to admit I'm really looking forward to finishing this so I can get back to Vikings Novel, which was at least reasonably well-organized from Draft One. Actually that one had a good outline structure too. I think I might write a book after those two, called How Not To Write A Novel, and just paste in my journals about this goddamned Barbarians Novel.
Anyhow, today looks to be an unrelenting slog. If I blog too much, yell at me, because it means I'm not getting enough done.
