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Boarders Writing a Novel Thread 3


Gabriele

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My NaNoWriMo Novel is over 90,000 words and I will get around to editing it shortly.

I have started the sequel and that is over 26,000 words, but it has been a struggle because the story is not going where I want it to, so I had to stop and outline the major events. Additionally, I think it would help if I revised and completed the first novel (NaNoWriMo0) before I get in too deep into the sequel.

Since I stopped writing the second novel, I had an itch to write about the characters that I had in my NaNoWriMo Novel (first in the series), I have decided to write a prequel of sorts. I am not sure if it will be a short story, novella, or a full-length novel.

From this whole expeience, I learned that I enjoy writing (preferably in a stream- of-consciousness kind of way), but revising is pure drudgery.

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I'm working - slower than I would like - on my third draft, i.e. my cut and line edit. I did a very rough cut-only draft 3.1 over a very short space of time before Christmas, and cut about 5K of grotesquely obvious stuff; no clue how much I've chopped so far from what will eventually be draft 3.5, as I'm working on paper, but I'm about a third of the way through and it seems to me I've already taken out about another 3-4K. If I'm right and I keep up the same rate, the full draft 3.5 will be just under 200K - still too long for a first novel but getting there.

From this whole expeience, I learned that I enjoy writing (preferably in a stream- of-consciousness kind of way), but revising is pure drudgery.

Re. this, I vary considerably. Some bits of writing I consider close to drudgery, largely when I've realised that the story will only go where I want to go if I add a scene I'm not going to enjoy writing. If I think about the editing process in the abstract, I find it difficult not to bury my head in my hands - and editing is normally the stage at which I start hating what I've written - but I'm really enjoying the editing I'm doing at the moment. Go figure. :dunno:

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  • 2 weeks later...

First post in the thread here.

I'm working on my first novel right now. Well, not first, I've tried my hand at others, but they invariably ended up getting relegated to my personal slush pile, but this is the first that I think will go anywhere.

Before, I always had the problem of stopping to rewrite and edit something that I just wrote. It got to the point where I'd spend forever on a small section just to make it perfect, then subsequently getting fed up and shelving the idea. This time, if something 'questionable' crops up, I tell myself 'I'll get to that on the next draft.' It's worked amazingly well, I've made far more progress on this story than on anything I've ever done before. Then again, editing this is likely to be a bitch.

One issue that I've had cropping up lately is one of terminology. My story (a fantasy) is set in a fantasy version of WWI/pre-WWI Europe and thus deals with the technological and societal changes that began to crop up during that time. I've noticed that some terms that my modern sensibilities take for granted seem a tad out of place in a not-Earth setting. For example, Communism. In the grand scheme of things, it's a fairly modern word, but when I dropped it into the story, it felt strangely out of place. I know this is more an issue of my mindset than any inherent wrongness of the word, but I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar.

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One issue that I've had cropping up lately is one of terminology. My story (a fantasy) is set in a fantasy version of WWI/pre-WWI Europe and thus deals with the technological and societal changes that began to crop up during that time. I've noticed that some terms that my modern sensibilities take for granted seem a tad out of place in a not-Earth setting. For example, Communism. In the grand scheme of things, it's a fairly modern word, but when I dropped it into the story, it felt strangely out of place. I know this is more an issue of my mindset than any inherent wrongness of the word, but I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar.

I was doing something quite similar (only set in the middle east) and I kept having more and more tags that read <make up name for a city based on Cairo>, <make up name for something like socialism>, etc, to the point where I scrapped it and made it an alternative history instead. If I want a city that evokes "Cairo", its probably better to just say Cairo.

Edit - in other words, i'm afraid I have no idea how to deal with the issue. :dunno:. I'm trying to remember now whether say, Meiville, ever actually used the word "communism", etc. And does GRRM use "democracy" in the bit with the mountain clans?

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I'm going to cheat.

I work for AuthorSolutions, the world's largest self-publishing company. One of the benefits I receive is that I get to publish two books a year for free. I'll be taking advantage of that benefit in September.

I don't plan on publishing my fantasy novel, at first at least. I have enough essays and short stories/novellas to publish two different books, which I'll try at first. See how much publicity I can get (it will be hard since they're self-published, even though I'm not paying a dime) and how much sales I can create. If I'm successful I might start to look appetizing to a larger publisher, which is my goal.

I really don't want to have to go through the whole submit-to-agents/publishers-and-wait game. I'd rather take the easy route. Hopefully.

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I'm going to cheat.

I work for AuthorSolutions, the world's largest self-publishing company. One of the benefits I receive is that I get to publish two books a year for free. I'll be taking advantage of that benefit in September.

I don't plan on publishing my fantasy novel, at first at least. I have enough essays and short stories/novellas to publish two different books, which I'll try at first. See how much publicity I can get (it will be hard since they're self-published, even though I'm not paying a dime) and how much sales I can create. If I'm successful I might start to look appetizing to a larger publisher, which is my goal.

I really don't want to have to go through the whole submit-to-agents/publishers-and-wait game. I'd rather take the easy route. Hopefully.

Interesting choice, Ser Possum. According to AuthorSolutions' CEO, average sales are about 150 copies, so to register on a publisher's radar (the usual rule of thumb is that you need to sell 5000 copies to interest a publisher) you'll have to sell over 33 times the average number of copies. I do worry that self-publishing, with its attendant poorer production values and lack of real distribution, will not be an easy route at all. Please do let us know how you get on - I'm hoping you beat the odds. :)

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Just a heads up - I'm trying out Holly Lisle's One-Pass Revision Method on my epic fantasy novel IRONBANE, and I'll be blogging about my progress here, if anyone's interested. :)

I am. :) I'm adding you to my LJ blog feed.

I started doing her process, and it seemed to be working fine, but then I stopped for some reason...

That's right. I got to about chapter 10 and remembered that I never incorporated my critique groups comments, so I went back and did that for the whole book. By the time I got back to my normal read through/revision pass, I just started marking up my print outs.

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Interesting choice, Ser Possum. According to AuthorSolutions' CEO, average sales are about 150 copies, so to register on a publisher's radar (the usual rule of thumb is that you need to sell 5000 copies to interest a publisher) you'll have to sell over 33 times the average number of copies. I do worry that self-publishing, with its attendant poorer production values and lack of real distribution, will not be an easy route at all. Please do let us know how you get on - I'm hoping you beat the odds. :)

Thanks, I'm hoping so too.

I think my book of essays - most of them memoir - has the better chance. I've already started the planning stages of my publicity run. I've lived in several different areas throughout the Midwest, including Chicago and Detroit, and many of my essays focus on what it's like not just growing up in these areas, but growing up poor/etc. I also made some very bad decisions in my youth and came out relatively unscathed as an adult. My hope is that my work will connect with many of those who have been through similar circumstances.

Making money off the books is not a major factor for me, so I'm going to keep the price relatively low. I've dealt with some authors who set their retail price at $19.99 (or a lot more) for their 100 page, 6x9 softcover. And then they wonder why no one wants to buy it. I'll keep my fingers crossed that a cheaper retail price will help move copies as well.

I'll be designing and providing the layout for the book myself, so I hope that curbs the production value issues. I deal with those a lot as well (author's demand a photo that's less than 300 dpi act as the cover or inserted into the book and then wonder why it looks like crap).

What Alaerien said. Also, getting over the narcissist label for having self-published fiction is a bitch. Hope it works for you.

This is my biggest hurdle, I think. One of the major positive factors with my company is that they do not buy the rights to the book. The author keeps them, so should any interest arise from either of my first books (a longshot, I know) I can sell it off and hopefully erase the stigma.

It's a major tossing of the dice, but at the same time, so is traditional publishing. Thanks for the well wishes!

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Intriguing! Thanks, Eloisa. I've never been to a convention.

1) Come to this one. We have creme eggs, or did have last time. (Seriously, if you're interested, we can take this to PM - send me your email addy and I can send you a copy of the 2008 programme. Four or five programme streams running consecutively, including lots of lit, media and random options for things to do. Much fun.)

2) Don't you dare steal my place at the workshop before I get in my manuscript to Martin! (joking, I think there's bags of time left)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh to be at the point of revisions. I keep slamming head first into the same road-blocks (though they seem to be doing a better job of disguising themselves these days). I'll get a few pages going, things will feel like they're flowing well... then the story will head off in a direction that I did not intend, and I'll have no hope of driving it back onto track in any sort of convincing manner. My poor protag has been in about 15 different scenarios where I stopped writing just before I was going to be forced to kill him. Worse yet, I'll go to read over the "good pages" that happened before the derail and find that what I had initially thought was fairly good is actually a load of fairly rotten cheese skittering along like a wounded cockroach running from a light that it's almost too blind to see. I'll find some little bits that are worth saving, but I'll end up discarding them because it would simply require too much work to dig them out of the manure and polish them off.

Anyone have a suggestion for getting past this? I'm on the verge of just sticking the whole thing on the shelf and focusing on 10-20k worth of short stories (just to keep myself from going nuttier than I already am).

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Oh to be at the point of revisions. I keep slamming head first into the same road-blocks (though they seem to be doing a better job of disguising themselves these days). I'll get a few pages going, things will feel like they're flowing well... then the story will head off in a direction that I did not intend, and I'll have no hope of driving it back onto track in any sort of convincing manner. My poor protag has been in about 15 different scenarios where I stopped writing just before I was going to be forced to kill him. Worse yet, I'll go to read over the "good pages" that happened before the derail and find that what I had initially thought was fairly good is actually a load of fairly rotten cheese skittering along like a wounded cockroach running from a light that it's almost too blind to see. I'll find some little bits that are worth saving, but I'll end up discarding them because it would simply require too much work to dig them out of the manure and polish them off.

Anyone have a suggestion for getting past this? I'm on the verge of just sticking the whole thing on the shelf and focusing on 10-20k worth of short stories (just to keep myself from going nuttier than I already am).

Some people might suggest an outline, even a rough one, to help give you some direction. For myself, i never use them. Just write through the book, the entire thing, and then change what you don't like when you go back to redraft. Don't stop and and dither and think about it, just go and then go back.

Thats worked for me. The only thing that i do is set milestones within the story that i want to hit. They need to travel here, need to do this.

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Oh to be at the point of revisions. I keep slamming head first into the same road-blocks (though they seem to be doing a better job of disguising themselves these days). I'll get a few pages going, things will feel like they're flowing well... then the story will head off in a direction that I did not intend, and I'll have no hope of driving it back onto track in any sort of convincing manner. My poor protag has been in about 15 different scenarios where I stopped writing just before I was going to be forced to kill him. Worse yet, I'll go to read over the "good pages" that happened before the derail and find that what I had initially thought was fairly good is actually a load of fairly rotten cheese skittering along like a wounded cockroach running from a light that it's almost too blind to see. I'll find some little bits that are worth saving, but I'll end up discarding them because it would simply require too much work to dig them out of the manure and polish them off.

Anyone have a suggestion for getting past this? I'm on the verge of just sticking the whole thing on the shelf and focusing on 10-20k worth of short stories (just to keep myself from going nuttier than I already am).

Hey, BD. You're not alone! This is a normal problem, and many people overcome it.

Am I right in assuming that you haven't completed a novel before? I think if you could just push through and finish this one, you'd be so much better off. You'd have the confidence of knowing you can finish what you start, and you'd have a complete first draft to improve.

Possible strategies for pushing through and finishing:

* Stop rereading. It sounds like rereading is only making you doubt yourself. There are various tricks for doing this - for example, you could turn text white after you've written it, so you can't see it any more. Or you could just keep scrolling down. Or at the end of every writing session you could email yourself a copy and delete it from your hard drive. Anything to stop you getting disheartened.

* You might find Lilith Saintcrow's concept of the "zero draft" effective. The "zero draft" is how Saintcrow gives herself permission to write badly - full of plot holes, cliches and disasters of all kinds. Since it's not even a first draft yet, there's no pressure.

* I've found Write or Die surprisingly effective. The concept is that you write in the web page, and whenever you stop writing it buzzes and flashes and stuff. So you have to keep going. (There's also a Kamikaze mode, in which if you stop writing it actually starts deleting your text. I haven't been brave enough to try this, but you might find it gives you the incentive you need.)

* You might try the outline Arthmail mentions. Some people prefer to outline, some prefer not to outline - but I think you can only know which type of writer you are when you've done one or the other successfully. At the moment, it's possible that you have a secret outliner trying to get out. Digging yourself into problems you don't know how to resolve sounds like a classic need-an-outline situation. It might be worth a try.

Hope this helps, BD.

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Personally, i could never use the write or die. I usually pump out a few pages, maybe as much as ten, and then i break. Play some video games, read - both. Then i go back to it.

Perhaps, if you want, describe your story to us and where you are having problems. Even just putting it down might help, or someone here might be act as a wall to bounce ideas off of.

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