Strange Attractors are not Attractive
Feb. 10th, 2010 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI'm not enjoying this process. Which may mean I'm doing it wrong, but I'm doing it the best way I know how. Trying to expand this story from 50,000 words to 90,000 80,000* is proving to be more difficult than I expected. I think that, in trying to edit it, I'm letting my critical brain get too involved. My best days on this project have happened when I let go of "should" and "It's got to be good!" and just wrote.
Which sounds easy enough, but you'd be wrong. I have to keep throttling my Ego, which keeps whispering that I should just give this one up as a bad job and write something else. But I'm on to that trick. If I do, it'll tell me the same thing about the next project, and the next. So I am by God gonna finish this one and get it out. Then I'll work on the next novel, and probably some shorts as well. But first this one.
Letting go of "should" while writing also means that I'm looking at abandoning the last 10,000 words of the original version as my new version diverges from that plot. And maybe that's what needs to happen. But I'll tell you this for nothing--no more writing short for me! All future novels will be aimed squarely at the 75-120,000 word range from the get-go. Rewriting is not my cuppa.
*75,000 words is the minimum for a novel, as best I understand. So anything over that will be acceptable. And at the rate I'm adding words, to get this project done by the end of February, that's what I'm going to aim for.
I'll be at RadCon this weekend with my lovely and talented wife. If you're gonna be there (and you're reading this, naturally), comment. I'd love to meet some imaginary friends and see you turn real, like the Velveteen Rabbit.
ETA: But not for the same reason as the Velveteen Rabbit. Not because I looooooove you, just because I'll have met you in meatspace. I'm just sayin'.
Project: Strange Attractors
Words Written Yesterday: 596 (I suck)
Words Written Today: 2,103 -- better, but not better enough to suit me.
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 29
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 3
Which sounds easy enough, but you'd be wrong. I have to keep throttling my Ego, which keeps whispering that I should just give this one up as a bad job and write something else. But I'm on to that trick. If I do, it'll tell me the same thing about the next project, and the next. So I am by God gonna finish this one and get it out. Then I'll work on the next novel, and probably some shorts as well. But first this one.
Letting go of "should" while writing also means that I'm looking at abandoning the last 10,000 words of the original version as my new version diverges from that plot. And maybe that's what needs to happen. But I'll tell you this for nothing--no more writing short for me! All future novels will be aimed squarely at the 75-120,000 word range from the get-go. Rewriting is not my cuppa.
*75,000 words is the minimum for a novel, as best I understand. So anything over that will be acceptable. And at the rate I'm adding words, to get this project done by the end of February, that's what I'm going to aim for.
I'll be at RadCon this weekend with my lovely and talented wife. If you're gonna be there (and you're reading this, naturally), comment. I'd love to meet some imaginary friends and see you turn real, like the Velveteen Rabbit.
ETA: But not for the same reason as the Velveteen Rabbit. Not because I looooooove you, just because I'll have met you in meatspace. I'm just sayin'.
Project: Strange Attractors
Words Written Yesterday: 596 (I suck)
Words Written Today: 2,103 -- better, but not better enough to suit me.
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 29
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 3