Old School
So.
With the baby coming, I am feeling a lot of pressure to finish this second book on time, so I will essentially have two in the can during the panicked period of diapers and late night feedings. Even if the UK goes ahead with their plan to print in August, I will still be a whole book ahead, which is comforting.
That gives me about 5.5 months, which is when the book is due to the publishers anyway. I could almost certainly beg for more time if I needed it, but I really don’t want to. I want to show them (and myself) that I can keep my promises and my deadlines.
The book is maybe half done, and as with any work of art, I have days when I love it and days when I hate it. Days when I feel inspired and days when I have to literally force myself to focus on it, cursing my laziness internally even as I fritter away the hours writing personal e-mails and surfing the web for porn or whatever.
Normally, I judge how much work I have done by word count, since, as I mentioned, hours spent at the computer do not necessarily correspond to hours spent working. I wrote 9200 words last week, which is decent, if not amazing. This week, however, I am going to have to come up with a new criteria, since I will not be doing much writing of new prose. The book has reached the point where all my disparate characters are about to start intersecting, which means I need to go back and do some homework to brush up on the details of the characters I haven’t worked on in months.
Normally, I do my editing onscreen in MSWord track changes mode, so that I can make changes to the document as I go, but I think that would be counter-productive at this stage. I want to see how the book READS so far, and if I give myself the ability to tinker overmuch, I will agonize over every word and not read it as I would someone else’s work.
So I have done the unthinkable, and gone old school. I printed all 400 or so pages out. On paper. I am going to sit and just read the damn thing like writers did in olden times back when they had to put sand on the paper so the ink could dry. If I have major notes, I will scribble them in the margins with a red pen, like they do in the third world. This will (hopefully) take away the temptation to wordsmith constantly, which is best done at later stages of editing.
After that, I will go through the edits my test readers sent me months ago on section one. I want an unbiased look at things before I examine other people’s opinions.
Of course, this will leave my writing itch unscratched, so hopefully I will focus that energy here, and update more than once a week. I have my next entry half-written already!
I don’t want to see any doodles of Ken Random in the margins, Mister, or you’ll get detention!
Oh, I can pretty much guarantee doodles. In the above pic, though, I am doodling Schmendrick the Barbarian, a character I created when I was 15 and who had many great adventures. If you blow the picture waaaay up, you can see Schmendrick holding a severed head.
In my defense, though, that picture is from Mr. McGowan’s double-period commercial art class in 10th grade. I’m still not doing my assignment, but at least I’m drawing in an art class.
Aye, it’s not as third world as you think to Print and review. Do have any idea how many awful videos I had to watch about the Writing Process and how authors do it this semester? Yeah, I know. For a fact Esmeralda Santiago (When I Was Puerto Rican) prints and scribbles too! But..wait..is Puerto Rico third world? Wait, no, Santiago moved to the U.S, duh.
Either way, good luck with that monster. I admire your undying persistance to kick novel ass.
If you’re going to write entries like this, you need to define your terms for those of us who live using the technology of the 21st century.
For starters – What is paper? What is this pen thingy you keep talking about? They come in red? Is that some kind of status symbol like in China? If so, is it governed by sumptuary laws?
i have been intimate with yellow legal pads and a Viagra pen.
*blush*
i wrote half a novel that way. it’s a pile of ka-ka, but it’s strangely satisfying to look at those yellow legal pads and see physical evidence i actually wrote something.
it’s….like being a peasant with your bare feet in the warm dirt as you dig your furrow.
(not going there. nope. not.doing.it.)
First of all, I’d suggest learning to type whilst holding a baby. It’s possible and great fun :). I wrote the first short story I ever sold with a two-year-old in my lap.
Secondly, my rewrites and edits always go better and are more thorough and productive when I print out my work and then go from there. This could be just me, but Kelly Link says the same thing, and she should know. (Look at me, little old short fiction writer telling the great Peat how I write. *rolls eyes*)
Good luck, Peat. It’s going to be a great year, especially with no Britney or Brangelina distracting you from your craft. 😉