process is always a revelation

[mizkit]

So I got up to work this morning but still wasn’t feeling the love. There are scenes in this book that I suspect are snowstorms, which-

-years and years ago, my writing partner Sarah/shadowhwk and I wrote a book together. I wrote a wonderful snowstorm scene. It was a chapter long. Sarah cut it to two pages. Then it got cut to a page. In the end, it was two

Comments

[st_rev]

HAVE A GUY COME IN THE DOOR WITH A GUN I HEAR THAT ALWAYS WORKS

[mizkit]

I've used that before. It works. :) (Sometimes it's a guy with a sword, or whatever, but yeah. The idea works. :))

[msagara]

I do cut & shape things after the fact (although given the length of some of my books this perhaps not obvious) - but unless I need to nuke & restructure, going back - for me, and of course, everyone’s process is different - grinds forward momentum to a messy, sloth-like halt.

[jasondrake]

and also, there were ninjas

[la_marquise_de_]

I cut for pace, too: I write slow books anyway, and the stuff that's pretty can just add to the slow, when it's my own work.

[flit]

This sounds like a great progress, because you don't find out too late that you're 5K words short because you cut your snowstorms at the end! And you have a better feel for the book as you go.

[mizkit]

For most books 5K short is Close Enough to the goal anyway, but it does apparently seem important to me overall in terms of pacing. :)