Rewriting the Novel: I Have Had to Buy 100 More Tiny Magnets

Is this progress?

I find I have had great success writing crabbed notes on scraps of index cards, though. The notes mean I don’t need to write things chronologically, which is a chore.

It’s good to have two ways to be productive. On left-brain days I outline, or right-brain days I write.  I don’t even see how people could sit down and start writing, without sketching it in first. That would be like painting a painting, and painting the bottom left corner in full detail and leaving the rest blank. Just .... how could you even do it? 

I’m slewing crap on the page with a broad brush. And all I write is the dialog - that way I don’t have to deal with tapping in to the narrator’s emotional pain. That’s later. I think what I’ll have at the end of this is a plot synopsis, all in dialog. Sadly, I’ll already have to gut it, because I have written 20k awkward words now, and that puts me at half the words for the age I want. 

Then a round later for description, and another for making the dialog distinctive, and then characterization, then reaction and emotion, then a vital one for subtlety, to de-telenovela, and then each one again, and then again one last time. 

I wonder if it’s like painting in that the last twenty minutes , when you do the details, is the most fun, when it comes alive. I hope the book isn’t like the block peonies, in which I plan and do the easy stuff and then give up when it gets hard and is ugly.

Comments

[KC]

Two ways to be productive: good.

I think that as long as you end up with an arc you're pleased with, you will be able to fill in whatever is missing (narrator, description, dialogue), but starting with dialogue sounds really good, because that forces things to happen, whereas narrator and description can be forced into place more.

A book is rather different from glazing painting; sections that end up feeling overworked can get cut and replaced without needing to start over entirely.

And also you do not have to write any baffling peonies. :-)

(I love the magnets and yay for a magnetic whiteboard!!!)

[TheQueen]

KC - you are the one who inspired me to get the magnetic whiteboard.

[KC]

May you have no regrets. :-)