Day 16 of the Writing Marathon
Nancy is in Laos. I'm writing chaos. Alex is at school. I feel like a fool. Enough rhyming. Time to write.
And I do mean write. Not redraft, not edit. No, write. One of the hardest things of redrafting Aelemental I have found to be is the writing. I am not just removing syntax errors and smoothing out dialogue or description. No, I have to rewrite whole passages. If I'm lucky it's limited to an added sentence or two. If I'm unlucky I'm churning out page after page, cutting and pasting and writing from scratch.
Or maybe not. Maybe this is what every writer goes through. I'm sure Steven King and George R. R. Martin say 'Fudging Hell' every now and then and erase page after page of literary 'gold', only to burn the midnight oil writing new stuff. Even J.K.Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien must have scratched their head, wondering how convoluted their imagined worlds have become and how to rewrite complete scenes of action and dialogue, only to make it fit again. And I definitely have a very involved world built up already.
So here I am, going over less than a chapter a day, trying to make it smoother, make it flow more logically, become more emotional and keep the action fast and furious, while making sure some character hasn't figured out some fact before some event occurs. Right now, I'm trying to juggle Simon, Alix, Maya and Karl running around FabelInsel, while trying to keep timed events from happening until they have to. I cannot divulge just yet what events these are (kinda spoils the surprise), but they are big. As in CNN Breaking News big. That's the way I like to connect our current socio-environemntal problems on Earth with the fantasy fictional world of Aelementals. Let's just say, remember that volcano eruption in Iceland? Well, it might have not been completely accidental.
At one point I wasn't keeping straight anymore, who was doing what or finding out what, when, so I ended up drawing yet another map of events. It did clarify everything a little and I am glad I did it, but geez, doesn't that say something about how NOT to write a book? Wish me luck with this spaghetti.
Nancy is in Laos. I'm writing chaos. Alex is at school. I feel like a fool. Enough rhyming. Time to write.
And I do mean write. Not redraft, not edit. No, write. One of the hardest things of redrafting Aelemental I have found to be is the writing. I am not just removing syntax errors and smoothing out dialogue or description. No, I have to rewrite whole passages. If I'm lucky it's limited to an added sentence or two. If I'm unlucky I'm churning out page after page, cutting and pasting and writing from scratch.
I'm very unlucky.
Or maybe not. Maybe this is what every writer goes through. I'm sure Steven King and George R. R. Martin say 'Fudging Hell' every now and then and erase page after page of literary 'gold', only to burn the midnight oil writing new stuff. Even J.K.Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien must have scratched their head, wondering how convoluted their imagined worlds have become and how to rewrite complete scenes of action and dialogue, only to make it fit again. And I definitely have a very involved world built up already.
So here I am, going over less than a chapter a day, trying to make it smoother, make it flow more logically, become more emotional and keep the action fast and furious, while making sure some character hasn't figured out some fact before some event occurs. Right now, I'm trying to juggle Simon, Alix, Maya and Karl running around FabelInsel, while trying to keep timed events from happening until they have to. I cannot divulge just yet what events these are (kinda spoils the surprise), but they are big. As in CNN Breaking News big. That's the way I like to connect our current socio-environemntal problems on Earth with the fantasy fictional world of Aelementals. Let's just say, remember that volcano eruption in Iceland? Well, it might have not been completely accidental.
At one point I wasn't keeping straight anymore, who was doing what or finding out what, when, so I ended up drawing yet another map of events. It did clarify everything a little and I am glad I did it, but geez, doesn't that say something about how NOT to write a book? Wish me luck with this spaghetti.
 |
| The lightbulb indicates the big event, everything revolves around, the leaves indicate knowledge that must be gained to move forward, and the worm came crawling out of my head going: What the $%*!, Are You NUTS? |
No comments:
Post a Comment