Great word count, and I know what you mean about depression with WIP, the idea, the thought of the story sounds so good, but then you write it, and you wonder if you're doing it any justice!
Taryn and Ethan take up every waking thought of my brain lately. I wonder how they'll handle this thing, and if I've not included enough of something.
I figured once I get it written down in it's rough format, I can go back and edit and add what I need to make the connective tissues basically connect.
It is a daunting job, and I hope that once it's critiqued to death, it'll be good enough to send off to query.
I'm gonna try and write 60k in 14 days. I've been told it's a daunting task and I'm setting myself up for failure. But dammit, I've been working on this since September of last year!
wow, 60k in 14? that's one heck of a goal. The good thing is that no matter what, I bet you'll get an amazing amount done-- just remember to feel good about what you do get in and not bad if you don't hit the full 60. And if you do hit it... wow.
But I think you have totally the right attitude. Job #1 is to get some kind of story onto some kind of paper. Job #2 is to make that story not suck.
I think for me, it's liberating to know that I can revise. I think that otherwise, I'd be much more down on myself for being where I am. I never used to be the type of person who got excited about revisions (or who even did revisions) and I think it was seeing what revisions did for FHT that made me realize that it's like a whole other world
( ... )
Yeah, your revision process gave me a lot of insight into how much difference it can make. I had done some substantive revisions on short stories before, but I hadn't really impact until I saw you take what were good scenes to begin with and transform them into something amazing.
I'm just concerned right now that I'll end up coming up with some bizarre ludicrous doesn't-hold-up-to-a-moth's-scrutiny plot developments that will taint the whole thing from here on. But I guess if that happens, I'll have to ask for an idea donor and write it again! That's the nice thing about writing: you can undo anything
Yay for the word count! And complete sympathy for the split personality. I just spent the morning revising a story and then spent lunch realizing how I have to go back and revise the revision...but as I'm sure you also know from other kinds of writing, the revision time is not fun while happening but the result is worth it.
At any rate, I'm sorry you're feeling discouraged because I think you've grown tremendously as a writer, and this has a lot of promise. Note how I got so caught up in the story I forgot to make line comments--for an old English teacher, that's caught up, indeed.
Tell the inner editor to go take a kayak trip or something, and come back when the first draft is done.
the revision time is not fun while happening but the result is worth it.
So true, so very true. I just need to suck it up and be more patient. I think I've even had that trouble with revision before... I want to get it out that I don't take the time to revise the revision, as you say.
Thank you so much for reading the start and giving me some great feedback. I will no doubt enlist you for the rest of this beast when I get there...
And yeah, I understand exactly what you're talking about. I have to physically restrain myself from going back and fixing things when I'm halfway through. I think we improve with every chapter that we write, so that by the time we get to Chapter 7 (for example), we're already wanting to go back and fix Chapters 1-6. Because we're better writers now, dammit! ;)
It's so important to remember to keep pushing forwards, though. I'm learning that any urge to go back and fix things part way through a draft, is (usually) just another form of procrastination. Just write down notes for the things you want to improve/change, then get on with the next chapter. And the next.
Until you reach the end. Then you can address all those notes when you have an entire draft to play with...
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Taryn and Ethan take up every waking thought of my brain lately. I wonder how they'll handle this thing, and if I've not included enough of something.
I figured once I get it written down in it's rough format, I can go back and edit and add what I need to make the connective tissues basically connect.
It is a daunting job, and I hope that once it's critiqued to death, it'll be good enough to send off to query.
I'm gonna try and write 60k in 14 days. I've been told it's a daunting task and I'm setting myself up for failure. But dammit, I've been working on this since September of last year!
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But I think you have totally the right attitude. Job #1 is to get some kind of story onto some kind of paper. Job #2 is to make that story not suck.
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I'm just concerned right now that I'll end up coming up with some bizarre ludicrous doesn't-hold-up-to-a-moth's-scrutiny plot developments that will taint the whole thing from here on. But I guess if that happens, I'll have to ask for an idea donor and write it again! That's the nice thing about writing: you can undo anything
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At any rate, I'm sorry you're feeling discouraged because I think you've grown tremendously as a writer, and this has a lot of promise. Note how I got so caught up in the story I forgot to make line comments--for an old English teacher, that's caught up, indeed.
Tell the inner editor to go take a kayak trip or something, and come back when the first draft is done.
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So true, so very true. I just need to suck it up and be more patient. I think I've even had that trouble with revision before... I want to get it out that I don't take the time to revise the revision, as you say.
Thank you so much for reading the start and giving me some great feedback. I will no doubt enlist you for the rest of this beast when I get there...
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And yeah, I understand exactly what you're talking about. I have to physically restrain myself from going back and fixing things when I'm halfway through. I think we improve with every chapter that we write, so that by the time we get to Chapter 7 (for example), we're already wanting to go back and fix Chapters 1-6. Because we're better writers now, dammit! ;)
It's so important to remember to keep pushing forwards, though. I'm learning that any urge to go back and fix things part way through a draft, is (usually) just another form of procrastination. Just write down notes for the things you want to improve/change, then get on with the next chapter. And the next.
Until you reach the end. Then you can address all those notes when you have an entire draft to play with...
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On the money. It really is. And a bad one, because it can shake up and slow down the entire process.
Just write down notes for the things you want to improve/change, then get on with the next chapter.
Good advice! I am going to start a list right now!
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Absolutely. You can just end up making it all worse and much harder to untangle when you you *do* get to the end.
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