first drafts and anticipated revisions

Lately, things have been going pretty well.

And by things, I mostly mean my writing*.  Last week it was going well enough, I was getting about 2k words/day which is respectable.  This week its been even better, and I'm getting between 2.5-3k/day, all on the YA NOVEL project of course.  Things are coming along with it, and I can't really ask for more than that.  The plot is progressing fine, my main character is really getting fleshed out.  It doesn't feel quite as true as THE RISING, but I don't yet think its terrible.

The first draft process is interesting for me, especially because I haven't yet revised any of my novels.  My first project (THE RISING) is finished and awaiting revision, but I've decided not to tackle that until I can finish the first draft of my current YA NOVEL project, along with perhaps another short story and/or nonfiction piece.  That way, come Fall semester, I'll have the first drafts of all the major writing ventures I want to work on complete, and I'll be able to focus on revision.

It won't be ideal--depending on how the workshop classes are structured, I could be simultaneously revising up to three projects at the same time (my main goal is to have THE RISING revised by the end of October so I can get it out to some alpha readers, but I'll also be revising whatever I'm submitting in my nonfiction and YA novel workshops along the way--as well as writing new stuff, mostly short stories, every so often . . . hopefully . . .).  It will be a busy semester, but I think I'll be able to handle it.

Anyway, what I'm getting at:  the first draft process.  Other than short stories, I've never really revised any of my creative work (yet)--its not that I don't believe in it, because I certainly do.  I just haven't gotten around to it yet, for the reasons mentioned above.

But here's the thing with most of the first drafts I've been crafting lately:  I plow right through them, getting the basic story and character arcs out on paper (or on my word processor), ignoring problems of about every shape and size with the justification that "I'll fix it in post."

Will these problems actually be fixable in post?  I don't know.  I suppose I'm going to find out this Fall.

I admit its something I worry about, to a degree.  I'm putting a fair bit of work, time, and energy into these projects.  They're investments.  If it turns out that they're completely unsalvageable**, well . . . you might be able to imagine my chagrin.

But, although it will be frustrating, I'm not too worried about it.  That surprises me, but (I think) its true. It will be disappointing, sure, and frustrating in twenty or thirty different ways, but it won't be the end of the world.  I'll be able to learn from them either way, is the idea (see footnote ** again).

Of course, ideally these novels will turn out okay, if not better-than-okay.  I'm pretty sure THE RISING will.  The more I think about it the more anxious I am to get back to it and see what that thing can really DO.  I'm more worried about the YA NOVEL, but even that I think will turn out satisfactorily.  Again, it may not be publishable in the end, but that won't be the end of the world.

Anyway, at this point there's nothing for it but to push through and see how things turn out.

And you know what?  I'm optimistic about it.



P.S.  This post was meant to be about BYU's MFA program, but my mind was, apparently, occupied by other things.


P.P.S.  Have you guys seen my YA NOVEL progress bar?!  It's like watching a drag race.  Really.



*  If you're curious, everything else leaves me with a cavitous lack of things to complain about, too.  Other than lots of friends leaving us for some exciting (and some less exciting) places, while we stick it out in Provo for another two years.  But other than that, everything is actually quite dandy.




**  By unsalvageable, I mean this:  after attempting revisions I think the piece is so utterly putrescent that I'm positive it will never be published anywhere, and know that even attempting to send it in to places would be a complete waste of my time and not a learning experience in any way--AND try as I might there is nothing I can seemingly learn from the disaster that I could do better in future first drafts.  So, basically, a worst-case scenario.  I don't think its likely to happen for either of these books--I don't think either of them will be that bad--but that also doesn't mean I expect both of them, or either of them for that matter, to end up published any time soon, if at all.  My hope, essentially, is that they will be good "learning experiences," making me ultimately a better writer and helping me to understand what I can do better the next time around.  If they can get published along the way, that's fantastic.  But I'm certainly not expecting it.

WeekendUpdate

Had an awesome family reunion this weekend, on my wife's side.

Family is good stuff. Makes you think, just a little, about how important the whole "building-relationships" thing is in life. Just a thought.

In writing news, you may have noticed that the progress bar for my YA Novel project is slowly creeping up there. DANG STRAIGHT. I've found a groove, and I'm hoping to stick with it for a while. The pendulum is swinging and I'm riding it for all its worth. I'm sure there will be some rougher spots ahead, but with any luck (and with a lot of hard work and dedication and motivation and decapitation [one of these things is not like the other . . .]), I'll be finished with this novel in the next three or four weeks. Knock on wood.

So, basically, all is well with the world, and writing is the bomb.com.

Just sayin'.

ups and downs

Some of you may still be curious about a certain post that I slipped in a week or so ago, discussing some changes. Others may have noticed that the progress bar for my YA Novel project has been suspiciously stagnant recently (and that it has now been reset to zero).  And it is obvious that I haven't been as consistent at getting posts up in the past week as I have been in the past two months.

Yeah. Well, all that can be traced back to one initial fact:

Writing is hard.

Seriously. It can be really hard sometimes. I'm looking back at my original novel, The Rising, and I'm wondering HOW I DID THAT. I mean, really. That thing is huge. And even though most of it sucks, there are some okay parts in there. And I wrote them. So that is good, right? I did all that.  Its something to be proud of, and I'll be honest, I feel pretty fabulous about it.

But, now that I'm trying to do it again, I'm having a hard time of it.

A lot of the difficulty, I think, comes with beginnings in general. The more I write, the more I realize that (at least for me) the hardest part is almost always just getting started--getting the beginning down on paper (or on the hard drive) and then going on from there. When I think back on TR, I sometimes forget how hard the beginning was in lieu of how easily the rest of the thing seemed to flow (which is not to say that the project itself was easy, because I don't think it was, or even that words easily came to my mind to write down every day, because they didn't). But the point is that the beginning of TR was difficult as well. It took me about the same time to write the first fifty pages as it did for me to write the last half of the book. So I'm no stranger to difficult beginnings.  I just think that those difficulties just get lost in the euphoria of what went well--a selective memory as it were.  And, now that I'm trying to get through another project, I'm having a really difficult time of it because I'm only remembering the good parts of my latest writing experience, and none of the bad parts.

Which brings me to my current project.  ORIGINALLY it was supposed to be an experiment in the urban fantasy genre, with "young adults" as the intended audience.  Well . . . to put a long story into a short container, I think that that particular idea just lost its momentum in the past three months.  And, honestly, I'm okay with that.  I think it was a necessary casualty in finishing TR*.  Which is sad in a way, I do think it is a pretty good idea with some potential, but I've concluded that now just isn't the time to write it.

So I've moved on to something else.

It is another YA Novel, of course.  But instead of an urban fantasy, its more of a "straight-up" fantasy.  It takes place in its own world, with its own rules and religions and geographies and peoples and so forth.

Basically, its about heroes.  And prophecies.  And the expectations of the public for said heroes because of said prophecies, and what happens when those expectations aren't fulfilled.  There's also an elitist school, monsters, a quest or two, some really mean kids, and much more.

Thats the basic premise.  And, in case you haven't caught on, that's the big change I was talking about in this post.  (If you're not a writer it may not seem like much of a change, but if you are then perhaps you know how drastic changing ideas mid-project can be.)  And, to be quite honest, I'm much more excited about this idea than I am about the previous one.  The previous one is good, like I said, I do think it has potential, but it just wasn't cutting it right now.  This new idea, I think, will (cut it, that is).

So, what does this mean for my own personal NaNoWriMo that I was so excited about a few weeks ago?  Well, it does mean that there is really no way I'll be able to have my NEW YA NOVEL PROJECT done by the end of July.  Really, there's just no way.

But, starting on Monday**, I'm (hopefully) going to get heavily into the New YA Novel Project.  My hope is to re-start my NaNoWriMo goal, and ideally be finished with the first draft of this project by around this time next month.  I think I just need to press through these beginning parts, do my best and hopefully gain enough momentum to start propelling me the rest of the way.  I really think that this (beginnings) is one of the most difficult things for me when it comes to writing.  I'm always so picky about what I want that I'm never satisfied with what I produce at the start of a project--and unless I push myself onward, I get stuck on those first few chapters, or even paragraphs, for days (or, when its really bad, for weeks).

So, thats whats been happening with my writing lately.  I've been in a bit of a funk, and it hasn't helped that my writing time has been severely diminished in the past few weeks (not necessarily a bad thing, but when it seems to happen too consistently it gets frustrating).  But I'm going to get back into it now.  I'm motivated, I can do it.  I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.


*  For those of you who don't know, I wrote the first two or three chapters of the ORIGINAL YA NOVEL PROJECT back in April sometime, right in the middle of when I was writing TR--then I set it aside and didn't touch it, thinking I would come back to it later this summer.  Well, I did, and things just didn't work out.


**  I've already done a great deal of world-building and character exploration for the new project, as well as something sort of like a first chapter.  But, starting Monday, my plan is to take a serious dive into it, and hopefully not re-emerge until I'm through the "beginning blues" I've been suffering.

a (potential) change in plans

I'm pretty sure a change in plans is taking place.  I'll confirm if/when it actually happens, but for now I just though I would taunt everyone*.  That's all.

* Whoa whoa, don't get all excited, just because there's taunting involved.  Its really nothing that great, just a slight (and by slight I mean major) and very unexpected (and by unexpected I mean unexpected) twist in how some things have been going.  I thought something would happen one way, and its starting to happen in a totally different way, that's all (forgive the ambiguity).  The only reason I'm not disclosing full details now is because I'm not sure if the change is permanent or not . . . hopefully it is, but I don't quite know for sure.  We will see.

on beginnings, and my own personal NaNoWriMo

So I'm back to work on my YA (young adult) novel--a project I started briefly in April on a whim, and then set it aside, as most of my time and energy was going into finishing The Rising.  I wanted to flesh the idea out enough that I wouldn't forget it, but put it aside to resume work on TR.

Things are going well.  I already had about 2.5k words done, and now I'm working on pushing that up, slow and steady.  At my high points while working on TR, I was writing 4-5k words/day.  I would love to get back into a groove like that with this YA project (as yet untitled), but I've forgotten one thing . . .

How FREAKING HARD BEGINNINGS ARE.

For the most part, I'm a discovery writer.  That means that, although I'll do some world-building and some very vague and sparse outlining, I really just start with an idea and run with it.  I generally have an idea of where I want things to end up, but more often than not that idea gets blown out of the water by other, bigger, better ideas as I'm writing.  Its a very organic process, and I love it.  But it also makes beginnings very difficult.  I can write a first chapter, no problem, but then I am strongly tempted to go back and revise that chapter, change it, make it better, or whatever.  Sometimes I even completely re-write the first chapter(s).  And then go back again and revise, change it, make it better, whatever.  And then rewrite them again . . .

It can be a very tedious and, more importantly, a futile process.  It doesn't get me anywhere.

So my biggest challenge in starting a new project is to just keep going.  I can't allow myself to go back and worry about whatever crap (and, for the most part, it is usually crap) that I write in the beginning.  I just have to persist and push myself forward until I start getting to the really good stuff (or, at least, the better-than-crap stuff).

Then, when I finish the whole project, I go back and start revisions.  (Anything [almost] can be fixed in post.)

Of course, I could dedicate an entire blog-post to my writing process and quirks--and perhaps I will--but right now I won't.  I just want to let everyone know that I am working on a new novel, and so far its going well.  I'm really excited about the crisis I have to start the thing out, and then, well . . . we'll see where it goes from there.

Also, in order to motivate me to press forward in the process and not worry too much about what I've already done (and, probably, screwed up), I'm declaring the month of July my own personal NaNoWriMo.  NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month.  Its a challenge and/or contest held in November, where writers all over the US attempt to write (the first draft of) an entire novel in one month (here's the official website).  50,000 words is the general word count consensus, which aligns quite nicely with the word count goal I have for my YA project.

So . . . I'm taking the challenge!  50,000 words in a month!

Think I can do it?  Thats quite a few words to write in one month, if you aren't aware.  About 1.6k words/day (although I'm planning on writing only 5-6 days a week, so it closer to 2k/day for me).  Nothing I can't do, as I've demonstrated with TR, but I just have to get into the groove.

So here goes NaNoWriMo, July edition.  Wish me luck.