Writerly Wackiness

Oh, brain, must we have the same conversation with every first draft?


In other words, the current WIP has been far more a slog than it should be. But as always, I plow through regardless. I think I might even be able to finish the first draft this week. But still, stupid brain.

A month and a half after I started the damn thing, and the de-crapified second draft of my novel-prequel-ish short story (now titled Demon Dreams) is finally done. The wee beastie beefed up to 6,700 words in the second draft. That's what a hearty diet of more detail and description will do for one's fictional figure. Now I just need to give the beastie a final go over, and then it's into the critiquing pile while I start something else. 

I'll be doing The Never-Ending Odyssey (aka TNEO) again this summer, so it's that weird time of year where I have to wait several months after finishing a story to get critiques on it.  (Well, I'll probably throw the story at my lovely local group, the Awesome Ladies of Awesomeness, for our next meeting, but I'll wait until I have the TNEO crits as well before making any major revisions.)  Being forced to wait is probably a good thing for me.  Even though I take forever to write stories sometimes (or maybe because I take forever to write them), I tend toward impatience, wanting to get them out the door in speedy fashion as soon as they're done. So it's probably healthy for me to have to sit on a few of them for a spell and see how they age. 

And speaking of TNEO, I get to take on the roll of moderator this year, which I'm sure will keep me super busy on top of all the critiquing and writing to be done for it.  But I'm looking forward to it.

And as of last night, the crappy first draft of a new short story is done! Early on in the draft, I predicted this one was going to push past the 6K mark. And it did. Crappy first draft has clocked in at 6,800 words. I am so proud of my eerily accurate word count predictions.  

Now on to the second draft de-crapification process!

ME: Ok, time to write!

BRAIN: No.

ME: What do you mean, no?  I have a short story first draft that needs finishing, and I have time to work on it.  Let's do this thing!

BRAIN: No, I'd rather check Facebook again.

ME: We just did that.

BRAIN: How about Livejournal?

ME: No one's posted anything new to read.  See?

BRAIN: How about Twitter?

ME: I'm still not sure I actually like Twitter.

BRAIN: There could be something new on all those other sites and forums you have bookmarked.

ME: Or we could write, you lazy piece of--

BRAIN: How about piano? You like playing piano.

ME: I like writing too. And unlike playing the piano, I haven't written yet today.

BRAIN: You could use some more coffee.  You like coffee.  And by the time you're done brewing it, I'm sure there'll be something new on LJ to read.

ME: That's it. We're visiting writeordie.com and getting some work done.

BRAIN: No, please, not that!

ME: Yeah, I actually got some work done with that last time, didn't I?

BRAIN: Hey, look, you can buy Write or Die for your desktop.

ME: Or I could just use the free version and get some work done.

BRAIN: It's only $10.

ME: Hmm, that might be nice.  But no, we need to work.

BRAIN: If you bought the desktop version, you'd be able work without opening your internet browser at all. You'd remove temptation.

ME: Hmm, that's a good point.  And it is only $10.

(a PayPal transaction and a download onto my desktop and laptop later)

ME: Ok, now it's time to work.

BRAIN: Don't you want to play with it first?

ME: Yeah, by WORKING.

BRAIN: Ok, we'll just close your email with the download link and--ooo, look! Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is on!

ME: Been there, mocked that.  Besides, if we write now, I'll let you watch Mega Python vs. Gatoroid tonight as a reward.

BRAIN: Really? Ok, let's do this thing!

ME: You say two hours later.  All right, let me just open my Scrivener file to see where we left off on this story.  And jot down this note about that idea we had.  Ooo, and if that happens, then maybe this? Yes! And then this. And this...

(half an hour later)

ME: Huh, look at that.  No first draftage, but I've got the entire rest of the story outlined.

BRAIN: And it doesn't totally suck.  Not sure it stands on its own, though. That's the problem with a novel prequel. It might not--

ME: Shut up and let me have my moment, would you?

As expected, this past week was rather weird for me schedule-wise.  Adjusting to the whole part-time from home day job shift was sort of like pulling on an old pair of pants; you're thrilled they fit again, but it's been so long since you've worn them that you're trying to remember which tops look right with them.  As a result, the time I spent trying on metaphorical tops meant I didn't do much fiction writing during the week.  At least until yesterday, when I finally got my ass out of the metaphorical dressing room.

After doing a small amount of research and photo scrounging on Thursday, I finally started the prequel-ish My Big Fat Epic Fantasy Novel short story.  Well, I had already written a first sentence or two and jotted down some notes a while back, but yesterday was when I finally sat my butt down and started writing in earnest.  The Silk Road Ensemble was kind of a "duh" soundtrack choice for working on a story set at a caravanserai, especially when one of the albums I have from them has a track called "Night at the Caravanserai."  And I threw Loreena McKennitt's "Caravanserai" onto my writing playlist for good measure.

After working on the short story for a bit, I switched gears slightly and did an hour writing exercise with some online folks for the first time in forever.  Recently, I've imposed all these huge expectations on myself as a writer, which often has the unfortunate side effect of making me petrified when I'm staring down a blank page.  This was a good way to tell those expectations where to shove it.  I turned off Serious Writer Brain and just goofed off for an hour by writing something silly that will probably never go anywhere beyond the exercise.  It was also my first time playing with Write or Die, which was a great help in turning off Serious Writer Brain.

And finally, on to the reading front:

( Readerly update under the cut... )

Took longer than it should have, but the crappy first draft of my hugely re-written short story is done. That's a relief. It was tough breaking through the "I'm a hack! I can't write!" self-doubt on this one, but I finally managed to dope up my internal editor long enough for me to finish.

And dude, what did I ever do without the internet? Need a hymn within the public domain with lyrics that in some way involve the words "soul" and "order" (as in ordering someone to do something) because it would work really well in your story? Consult the almighty Google, and it shall provide. And once you have the hymn, you can go on YouTube and listen to Mahalia Jackson sing the hell out of it while you finish writing the last scene.

Now for the fun part of tidying up the crappy first draft so that it can become a not-so-crappy second draft. And I mean fun in the non-sarcastic sense. I actually prefer the revision part of the process to the cranking out raw wordage part.

I haven't gotten very far on the short story rewrite I started last week, but there has been progress.  Said progress took the form of the following stages:

Stage 1: I can't do this! I don't know how to write!  I'm a hack!

Stage 2: I can totally do this.  I just need to figure out the right starting place.  Ah, there it is. 

Stage 3: Remember how you're rewriting most of this from scratch? That makes it a first draft essentially.  So stop trying to make it perfect and just keep writing already, dumbass.

Stage 4: Writing! I'm writing! I'm in the zone! I'm picking up steam and . . . crap, here's my train stop.