Falling in love again
I may not have said this recently, because I've been too busy panicking about the bits that didn't work, but Futureproof seriously kicks arse as a story. Like, there are so many amazing moments. So many wonderful characters, with amazing, human motivations. So many awesome plot complications, little bits of worldbuilding that first seem tangential but after turning up a couple of times suddenly interconnect with a host of other things to drive everything onwards. And this pass I'm doing is making everything so much better, too.
It's finally come alive in my mind again, and I love this story. It's also just tipped over 70,000 words, which is awesome, and I'm getting great feedback from Pear which is even better.
I'm almost half way through what I'm callling my 'second draft', although it's a bit nebulous how many times I've edited it, really, given how sporadic my efforts have been over the last ten years. It's probably at least third. It's much, much more than that for some sections, because I love to polish my shiny objects, but also the occasional difficult scene which has been ripped out and rewritten and needs to be ripped out again is barely more than an outline. This pass is about sharpening characters and plots and foreshadowing and filling in those continuity gaps to make it smooth, so everything come together all inevitable and shiny. Next pass after this will be focussing on incidental worldbuilding and visuals. Then the final one is the spelling/grammar check. No, there's no way I'm going to hit my ten year deadline for those two - but hope I can make it to the end of this edit in time. Maybe even the one after that, and have it be my deadline to send the whole thing off to a couple of people who can give me final-draft style feedback.
But... I'm about to strike the next unhappy valley where what I've written gets a bit dodgy. Where the plot has changed since I first wrote the section and doesn't quite fit any more, or sections where I've never quite managed to write something I felt entirely pleased with. Where I'm not entirely certain how I can make point A flow to point B.
It'll be okay, as long as I can keep a handle on the fact that it doesn't have to be perfect. Done is better than perfect. Done gets it out the door, so the golden moments can light up for people, so the characters can walk into their hearts, and the sly incidentals that turn out to be not so much so can blow their minds. Occasionally, hands can be waved. This is a story, not a mathematical proof.
All I have to do is a little bit of plumbing to connect it all up, and it will be golden. These dodgy scenes don't have to be amazing. The story is not only as good as its worst scene; quite the reverse. Of course every scene won't be as amazing as the most amazing ones that carry their own freaking spotlight with them. That's not every scene's job. Some scenes are backstage workers, their jobs simply to say what they're there for, set everything up, and then get out of the way so we can move on to the payoff. Not just for the reader, but for the writer too.
Futureproof is an amazing story, and it's not the incredible scenes that wrote themselves that will get it out the door. It's the other ones. The difficult ones. The unsung heroes of any story: the bits that didn't feel quite right, but got written anyway.
They're not going to feel quite right, no matter what I do. But I need to write them anyway.
It's finally come alive in my mind again, and I love this story. It's also just tipped over 70,000 words, which is awesome, and I'm getting great feedback from Pear which is even better.
I'm almost half way through what I'm callling my 'second draft', although it's a bit nebulous how many times I've edited it, really, given how sporadic my efforts have been over the last ten years. It's probably at least third. It's much, much more than that for some sections, because I love to polish my shiny objects, but also the occasional difficult scene which has been ripped out and rewritten and needs to be ripped out again is barely more than an outline. This pass is about sharpening characters and plots and foreshadowing and filling in those continuity gaps to make it smooth, so everything come together all inevitable and shiny. Next pass after this will be focussing on incidental worldbuilding and visuals. Then the final one is the spelling/grammar check. No, there's no way I'm going to hit my ten year deadline for those two - but hope I can make it to the end of this edit in time. Maybe even the one after that, and have it be my deadline to send the whole thing off to a couple of people who can give me final-draft style feedback.
But... I'm about to strike the next unhappy valley where what I've written gets a bit dodgy. Where the plot has changed since I first wrote the section and doesn't quite fit any more, or sections where I've never quite managed to write something I felt entirely pleased with. Where I'm not entirely certain how I can make point A flow to point B.
It'll be okay, as long as I can keep a handle on the fact that it doesn't have to be perfect. Done is better than perfect. Done gets it out the door, so the golden moments can light up for people, so the characters can walk into their hearts, and the sly incidentals that turn out to be not so much so can blow their minds. Occasionally, hands can be waved. This is a story, not a mathematical proof.
All I have to do is a little bit of plumbing to connect it all up, and it will be golden. These dodgy scenes don't have to be amazing. The story is not only as good as its worst scene; quite the reverse. Of course every scene won't be as amazing as the most amazing ones that carry their own freaking spotlight with them. That's not every scene's job. Some scenes are backstage workers, their jobs simply to say what they're there for, set everything up, and then get out of the way so we can move on to the payoff. Not just for the reader, but for the writer too.
Futureproof is an amazing story, and it's not the incredible scenes that wrote themselves that will get it out the door. It's the other ones. The difficult ones. The unsung heroes of any story: the bits that didn't feel quite right, but got written anyway.
They're not going to feel quite right, no matter what I do. But I need to write them anyway.