My son is with his dad again for the next week, so I have about five days to work on my book. Nothing planned, just locked into the house. It feels a little lonely, I have to admit, but I know trying to make plans will take effort, and that takes time away from home, and one thing leads to another, and maybe it wouldn't be as productive. Although today I did my eight hours in front of the computer, and just completed one scene, totalling about 2000 words.
I also discovered I hate my prologue which I had once loved, and spent hours and hours on perfecting it. It's just too obvious, and heavy handed. So I think it's probably gone. It's hard to lose that much time, and I know that my constant rewrite as I go along probably isn't the best practice, but sometimes the sentences just don't seem quite right, and I want to play with them. There are times, when I just am not expressing what I am feeling, and it takes time to fix the sentences until it makes sense. I wonder if other writers go through that, if they rewrite sentences over and over until it sounds right to them. I think for me, it's really the difference between me being okay and being good. Others might just be better at it, maybe the others are more confident in what they wrote first time. But my friends keep telling me that books take a long time.
Except currently my one friend who I am hoping will read my draft and give me some edits is free at the beginning of Jan, and I want to get the first two chapters to her then. Not at the speed I am going though, but maybe tomorrow I will have to rethink my strategy. And if not, I can send her a few scenes, to critique. It might help with everything over all.
Having not written for while, over the Christmas holidays, it was hard to start again. I had the usual panic of how nobody could possibly want to read this book, it's so morbid, and then questioning myself on why I came out with such a morbid book, and maybe I should change it. But no matter how I play with the story and characters in my mind, I can see them behaving that way, as shocking and unpleasant as it was.
Expressing that to my friend, as usual he had great advice, which were, if I had wanted to write something "super commerical" than I would have done it years ago, and that I needed to "Keep on track and have faith in your overall vision!" And that the vision of the book when it goes to the publishers should be pure, as I am sure they will ask for a lot of changes if they ever pick it up. SO now, whenever I think no one would want to read it, I have to remember that I am not a commercial writer, and it's true most people will not want to read it.
At the same time, it doesn' t mean it's not valid. As my other friend said, that it's not a sad thing to self publish if no one wants to do it for me, because just because it's done for free, doesn't mean it isn't valid and that no one wants to read it. Look at blogs? It's mostly free, people write it for their own pleasure and interests, and plenty of people actually read it. So that's also a bit of a relief, to know even if no one will publish it, it's not a terrible idea to put it on the net.
I went through a series of old drafts to look for a deleted scene. I went back as far as one month ago, and it was hard to believe how undeveloped some of the ideas and scenes were. My "book" was half written paragraphs, dialogue with no speech marks or descriptions and descriptions of things or people in no particular order, all in pages that I had sectioned into scenes. Now so many of these scenes are written, all the random passages are gone, and real developed stories have emerged.
I really was able to gage my own process, and I was surprised by how much work I had actually done, and what I had achieved. It seemed like a book more and more everyday, and if I keep going, some of the more undeveloped scenes will come together as all the ones that I have already done, and there is no point feeling panicked or worried because as long as I put time and effort into it, then eventually, it will be finished. The worry of course it not having the stamina to reach my goal. But at this point, I feel quite confident, especially after seeing how far I have come.
So there we go, I still have a few days to get through the first two chapters or attempt to get through the two chapters.
Off to bed, getting up early tomorrow and see if I can get 10 hours in.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 