Lat night I commited a nano sin.
I spent four whole hours last night reading all of the words I'd already written and *editing* them! I know, I know. I did this even after I wrote in 32pt Bold font across the top of the page, "STOP!!!! EDITING IS FOR DECEMBER - REALLY."
I felt completely disconnected from my story and I wanted to go back to the beginning, to remember why I started the damned thing in the first place. And I swear that I have developed punctuation turrets. I promise that I really do know the proper usage of both commas and apostrophes and yet still, somehow, they keep cropping up randomly and at completely inappropriate times! I wanted to remember why I thought I loved these characters and get myself back on track.
It actually started when I got to the chapter where I planned to write about my antagonist and his back story. I got through, "Chapter 5 - Tommy" and then I stared at the screen for five minutes. Then I typed, "I'm totally scared to write about Tommy. I am afraid that I will go too far, or not far enough, that I will fail him somehow ... I have this portrait in my head and I am terrified that I will screw it up while trying to translate it onto the page." It is bad enough that when I started the book Tommy was supposed to be The Big Bad, and now it appears that he is really just a shadow of his predecessor ... a wanna be Big Bad. He still has to be Bad though, scary bad, bad enough to challenge my hero and propel the story towards it's conclusion.
So I committed the sin of pretending for a few hours that it was December. Then I dove in, but I still chickened out. Instead of writing the narrative chapter about Tommy, I made a list. I wrote sentences listing the facts I know about him, fragments of description and events, quotes and ideas. Then I moved on to Chapter 6, which is proving to be a much easier chapter.
I am still left with the problem of Tommy though. I am not going to be able to avoid him forever ... and I can't afford another night of editing!
I felt completely disconnected from my story and I wanted to go back to the beginning, to remember why I started the damned thing in the first place. And I swear that I have developed punctuation turrets. I promise that I really do know the proper usage of both commas and apostrophes and yet still, somehow, they keep cropping up randomly and at completely inappropriate times! I wanted to remember why I thought I loved these characters and get myself back on track.
It actually started when I got to the chapter where I planned to write about my antagonist and his back story. I got through, "Chapter 5 - Tommy" and then I stared at the screen for five minutes. Then I typed, "I'm totally scared to write about Tommy. I am afraid that I will go too far, or not far enough, that I will fail him somehow ... I have this portrait in my head and I am terrified that I will screw it up while trying to translate it onto the page." It is bad enough that when I started the book Tommy was supposed to be The Big Bad, and now it appears that he is really just a shadow of his predecessor ... a wanna be Big Bad. He still has to be Bad though, scary bad, bad enough to challenge my hero and propel the story towards it's conclusion.
So I committed the sin of pretending for a few hours that it was December. Then I dove in, but I still chickened out. Instead of writing the narrative chapter about Tommy, I made a list. I wrote sentences listing the facts I know about him, fragments of description and events, quotes and ideas. Then I moved on to Chapter 6, which is proving to be a much easier chapter.
I am still left with the problem of Tommy though. I am not going to be able to avoid him forever ... and I can't afford another night of editing!