So I thought now would be a good time to talk about what I’m doing this semester, besides the critical thesis. If all goes as planned I am going to write an entire first draft of my novel by the end of the semester. The goal is 15,000 words every month through December.
Current WIP word count: 15,029 words!
I can’t believe I’ve managed to get this much done in one month. Basically what I did was work on my thesis until the 15th (the due date) and the second half of August I tried to write at least two single spaced pages a day. Now that I met my word count goal I’m going back to working on the second draft of my thesis and then I’ll have to write another 15,000 words of my novel by the end of September.
So far it’s proving to be a pretty amazing/helpful journey. I spent so much time last semester trying to figure out what I was writing, what this story is really about, and because I’m a perfectionist I spent a lot of time revising the first fifty pages. After workshopping the beginning this summer at residency I realized there was so much I was ignoring–backstory, character motivations, the rules of the fantasy elements/magic, etc–that I decided to step back and dig deep into these issues. I haven’t figured out everything yet, but I feel much closer and I’m really excited about what I’ve got. Unfortunately, it does mean I’m mostly rewriting everything.
Anyway, sitting down and just writing out the story without worrying about making everything pretty, or getting every detail exactly right, is so freeing. I have such a hard time looking at the big picture with my stories. I love to focus on the intricate details, ie., all the pretty words. Writing out large chunks at a time gives me more of a sense of the arc, of pacing, of who my characters really are outside the pretty words. In other words, I feel like I am figuring shit out. And I am well pleased. Hell, I’m even letting my characters TALK to one another. A minor miracle! They have conversations. They interact. They do things!
My current advisor once told me in my first workshop at VCFA that when we are writing a rough draft we are telling ourselves the story. That’s what I’m trying to give myself permission to do. What’s nice about this attitude is that I know that if there is too much backstory in the beginning, if I give away too many secrets or mysteries too soon, I can always go back and move things around. It’s not static. And once I have the whole story I can look at the whole arc and see what needs to change, and only at the very, very end focus on all the pretty words 🙂
Leave a Reply