Draft 3, here I come!

November 2009, I sat down at my computer thinking "Okay, I can do this: I can write a novel." As the months wore on, I started to question the validity of that statement. Could I really write a full novel? I knew I could start one, I'd done that dozens of times before, but could I actually finish one? Most days, I wasn't so sure, but I kept at it anyway. Then in February 2010, I did it: I finished...the first draft.

Then a few months later, the second. In July, I sent out copies of my manuscript to a few willing participants who had promised me feedback. One of them responded with notes on the entire novel, another on the first twelve chapters, still another on the first chapter (though, to be fair, this was all she had received).

And now, in November of 2010, a little over a year after I first began this project, I am beginning work on the third draft of Zenith.

I once compared rewriting to surgery:

For years I have heard authors toss around this phrase, that all writing is rewriting. I want to tell them they've got it backwards, that all rewriting is writing. You have a fully formed first draft and suddenly, you are starting from scratch. There is no such thing as a minor edit at this point, this is not plastic surgery. This is orthopedics, the breaking and reforming and placement of bones, the bare skeleton of what you wish to create. This is heart surgery and brain surgery, this is fixing the insides of a story so that it can live and breathe and speak on its own someday. You recreate the story, instead of making it look better. You rewrite it. Re-write. Write again. You essentially write a second novel, by fixing up that first draft. 

 I stand by everything I said then and I am happy to say that my patient is out of the woods and stable these days. No more trauma surgery, no more heart or brain surgery. I now get to move on to the less threatening issues. I can focus on the lacerations and bruises, make sure everything is okay and stable. I get to comb my novel for inconsistencies, make sure my characters and my story get across well enough, and destroy all evidence of typos and grammar faux-pas. This is plastic surgery, the surface reformations and beautification stage. I hope it comes out pretty enough, in the end.

NaNoWriMo '10 - Why are You Participating?

There are many reasons why writers and hopeful writers join in the fun insanity of NaNoWriMo each year, but I thought it would be important to touch on a few of them, for the first year participants especially.

I want to write the Next Great American Novel.
That's awesome! I am all for that and I support you fully...but NaNo is not the place to start. The thing about NaNoWriMo is that you are writing so much on such a short, fairly unrealistic (in terms of a complete novel) deadline, that whatever you write is going to suck. Letting your work suck is the only way you will finish by 30 November, trust me. You will not be able to write an amazing work of Literature during NaNoWriMo, but you can get a start, which brings me to the next reason.

I want to get my ideas down.
This is the much more realistic and sane approach to option A above. Don't worry about specifics or quality, just get your ideas down on the page and get that word count up. 50,000 words of crap may not make a novel, but it makes for one hell of a detailed outline for the Next Great American Novel. Use it as a guide to help you actually write a novel after November has ended and I think you'll find it much easier to navigate your ideas when they are on the page than when they are floating freely in your head.

I want to get into the habit of writing everyday.
This, my friends, is what NaNo was created to do. NaNo is not about writing an amazing novel that you can send off to agents on 1 Dec (note: do not do this. Under any circumstances), it is about writing everyday, getting words out even when you feel like you don't have much to say. When you force yourself into doing it and have a quota to make each day, you are much more likely to write. And as Madeleine L'Engle said, "inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it." Sometimes the hardest part of writing is just sitting down and starting—that's what NaNo is meant to help you with.