Process talk
I do not understand how people are able to produce books in under three years, never mind three books a year. There are times when I think the very worst thing that could happen to me would be to have a contract that obligates me to produce a book in a certain time frame.
(I probably shouldn’t say that where a publisher or agent might see it. But well, truth is better than not, right? And besides, I’m hoping someone in the comments will tell me where I’m wrong.)
Let’s start with writing pace. This, I will allow, is partially my own fault. When I’m pushing and making sure that I write something every day (or almost every day), my pace does pick up. After a week or two, I go from 300 words per hour to perhaps 700 words per hour. And often I hit my stride (particularly if I choose to take a week off from work just to write) and find myself hitting 1000 words/hour for multiple hours per day. I have been known to have 15,000-word weeks.
My current WIP has been my current WIP for nearly three years. I wrote the zeroth* draft of Son of the Six Winds** in four or five months at the end of 2010. It was about 80K words. It was, without doubt, the very fastest I have ever written anything.
Then I wrote practically nothing for a year. I was supposed to be working on a different book in a different universe, but my brain didn’t want to go there and I had a lot on my mind. This was the year where I placed bids on a couple of houses and didn’t get them.
At the beginning of 2012, I decided that since my brain didn’t want to move on to a new novel, I should take the zeroth draft of Six Winds and turn it into a first draft, something with enough coherence that I could send it to beta readers. So I spent about 3 months doing that. This involved adding a bunch of words, so the 1st draft was around 90K.
Now, I am definitely NOT casting aspersions on my beta readers, who are all AWESOME and very well performed the role of letting me know if certain specific details were working or not. I have definitely made changes to the book based on things they said.
But what I have never had for a novel is the kind of deep-level editing where someone says, “This scene is rushed” and “I feel like we missed a couple of steps of character development to get from [blah] to [foo]”; “We need to see more of X before this point” or “I don’t understand why Y is a problem; you need to make that more clear.”
That is EDITING, which is not fair to ask of beta readers.
Right now the only person I have doing that hardcore-edit role is ME, which is supposedly not a good thing. I am a little skeptical about that-I’m actually a pretty good editor, and there’s no reason I can’t turn those skills on my own work except for the whole “You’re too close” factor.
But it can be done. The main problem with it is that it takes time.
I let Six Winds sit for 10 months after hearing from the beta readers. Now I’m going through it again, preparing revision notes so that I can turn this first draft into something that might resemble a real book. Four-fifths of my notes are of this form:
“Work [character development/political situation/worldbuilding element/plot point] into the story earlier.”
Which might also be boiled down as “Set up action before it happens” or “Foreshadowing is your friend.” This what happens when trying to manage a lot of plot threads. They come loose.
The other fifth of the notes are along the lines of “Scene is rushed-make more detailed” or “Blah blah even I am bored by this nattering” or “Show this; don’t summarize it.” Basically, pacing issues.
I don’t know where I would go to get that depth of editing, other than paying someone. And I’m not keen to pay someone unless I know for certain they can give that kind of edit. So once again it’s back to me, and me taking time to let the story sit around while my backbrain simultaneously gains editorial distance while letting the real intentions and ideas filter up to where I can see what I meant to say but failed to say, there in the rush of the 0th and 1st drafts.
I know, I’m whining. “Oh woe! No one can help me write this book!” This is the lonely aspect of writing, where it’s just you and the words and you don’t know what to do with them.
Here’s my question for those of you who can turn out a reasonably well written novel in less than 3 years: How the fuck do you do it? I guess you published novelists have an editor who reads...what? The first (not 0th) draft? And gives notes of the sort I talk about (pacing) and allows you to get to the 2nd draft faster than I can?
*zeroth draft: The vomiting up of Story. Things are an utter mess. Things that happened in chapter 3 are completely obliterated so that chapter 15 can work right, but the writer knows she will be fixing chapter 3 later. Character motivation is said rather than shown, characters do utterly inconsistent things, and coincidences help move the plot. It’s all a giant mess. Apparently there are writers who turn out cleaner things than this on their first go, but wow, I am not one of them.
**Yes, it has a title now! Not a good one, but not too bad.
(I probably shouldn’t say that where a publisher or agent might see it. But well, truth is better than not, right? And besides, I’m hoping someone in the comments will tell me where I’m wrong.)
Let’s start with writing pace. This, I will allow, is partially my own fault. When I’m pushing and making sure that I write something every day (or almost every day), my pace does pick up. After a week or two, I go from 300 words per hour to perhaps 700 words per hour. And often I hit my stride (particularly if I choose to take a week off from work just to write) and find myself hitting 1000 words/hour for multiple hours per day. I have been known to have 15,000-word weeks.
My current WIP has been my current WIP for nearly three years. I wrote the zeroth* draft of Son of the Six Winds** in four or five months at the end of 2010. It was about 80K words. It was, without doubt, the very fastest I have ever written anything.
Then I wrote practically nothing for a year. I was supposed to be working on a different book in a different universe, but my brain didn’t want to go there and I had a lot on my mind. This was the year where I placed bids on a couple of houses and didn’t get them.
At the beginning of 2012, I decided that since my brain didn’t want to move on to a new novel, I should take the zeroth draft of Six Winds and turn it into a first draft, something with enough coherence that I could send it to beta readers. So I spent about 3 months doing that. This involved adding a bunch of words, so the 1st draft was around 90K.
Now, I am definitely NOT casting aspersions on my beta readers, who are all AWESOME and very well performed the role of letting me know if certain specific details were working or not. I have definitely made changes to the book based on things they said.
But what I have never had for a novel is the kind of deep-level editing where someone says, “This scene is rushed” and “I feel like we missed a couple of steps of character development to get from [blah] to [foo]”; “We need to see more of X before this point” or “I don’t understand why Y is a problem; you need to make that more clear.”
That is EDITING, which is not fair to ask of beta readers.
Right now the only person I have doing that hardcore-edit role is ME, which is supposedly not a good thing. I am a little skeptical about that-I’m actually a pretty good editor, and there’s no reason I can’t turn those skills on my own work except for the whole “You’re too close” factor.
But it can be done. The main problem with it is that it takes time.
I let Six Winds sit for 10 months after hearing from the beta readers. Now I’m going through it again, preparing revision notes so that I can turn this first draft into something that might resemble a real book. Four-fifths of my notes are of this form:
“Work [character development/political situation/worldbuilding element/plot point] into the story earlier.”
Which might also be boiled down as “Set up action before it happens” or “Foreshadowing is your friend.” This what happens when trying to manage a lot of plot threads. They come loose.
The other fifth of the notes are along the lines of “Scene is rushed-make more detailed” or “Blah blah even I am bored by this nattering” or “Show this; don’t summarize it.” Basically, pacing issues.
I don’t know where I would go to get that depth of editing, other than paying someone. And I’m not keen to pay someone unless I know for certain they can give that kind of edit. So once again it’s back to me, and me taking time to let the story sit around while my backbrain simultaneously gains editorial distance while letting the real intentions and ideas filter up to where I can see what I meant to say but failed to say, there in the rush of the 0th and 1st drafts.
I know, I’m whining. “Oh woe! No one can help me write this book!” This is the lonely aspect of writing, where it’s just you and the words and you don’t know what to do with them.
Here’s my question for those of you who can turn out a reasonably well written novel in less than 3 years: How the fuck do you do it? I guess you published novelists have an editor who reads...what? The first (not 0th) draft? And gives notes of the sort I talk about (pacing) and allows you to get to the 2nd draft faster than I can?
*zeroth draft: The vomiting up of Story. Things are an utter mess. Things that happened in chapter 3 are completely obliterated so that chapter 15 can work right, but the writer knows she will be fixing chapter 3 later. Character motivation is said rather than shown, characters do utterly inconsistent things, and coincidences help move the plot. It’s all a giant mess. Apparently there are writers who turn out cleaner things than this on their first go, but wow, I am not one of them.
**Yes, it has a title now! Not a good one, but not too bad.