Sticking it Out

[Philip Overby]

I've posted about this before and even wrote articles for the main site about this topic. But it becomes increasingly hard some days to stick with my current novel in the editing phase and not become tempted to start working on a new novel. I took some advice I got here and left Novel 1 alone for a while (about 2 months.) I started brainstorming for Novel 2 (this isn't a series, just referring to them by those names) and got really excited about it. Then when I started writing up some character profiles and rough outlines, I found myself wanting to stay working on Novel 2. But Novel 1 is nowhere near being finished and is still deep down in the trenches.

What to do, what to do...

So, I need some gentle prodding to get me to stay focused on Novel 1 and get it edited and revised. I've recently experienced a surge in interest in Novel 1, so I'm hopeful I can get my problems worked out. When I start looking at the overall picture, I get overwhelmed. There are so many problems.

I've learned my lesson and hopefully I'll plan better next go around. But for now...any tips to keep me excited and on task with Novel 1?

 

[Butterfly]

Imagine....

The cover, the feel, the smell, the weight, the size of the book when it's finished and ready to take pride of place on your bookshelf.

Imagine an entire bookshelf filled with books that have your name on the cover. Then get to work.

 

[The Dark One]

To tell the truth, I think there are a number of current threads more-or-less on this point...nevertheless...

To respond to Butterfly's point (slightly), I used to fantasise about snapping my fingers and the finished product would appear in my hands. So easy...willing time forward to the idea manifesting as a book for sale on the shelves.

Now that I do have the book on the shelves, it is the journey I cherish. It was an unbelievable journey and looking back every moment of it is precious to me. As you sit tapping away in the lonely garret, be aware that you are making history...a history that some day will fascinate your legions of fans.

Live every moment of your creative life in the full knowledge that you are moving slowly and surely towards your destiny.

 

[Chilari]

Think about the three or four scenes in Novel 1 you absolutely love, the scenes you enjoyed writing the most, which have the biggest impact on you, or which you think will really surprise readers. Use those scenes to reignite your passion for the project, and as a reward system - you can't edit scene 4 until you've done scenes 1, 2 and 3.

 

[Philip Overby]

To tell the truth, I think there are a number of current threads more-or-less on this point...nevertheless...

To respond to Butterfly's point (slightly), I used to fantasise about snapping my fingers and the finished product would appear in my hands. So easy...willing time forward to the idea manifesting as a book for sale on the shelves.

Now that I do have the book on the shelves, it is the journey I cherish. It was an unbelievable journey and looking back every moment of it is precious to me. As you sit tapping away in the lonely garret, be aware that you are making history...a history that some day will fascinate your legions of fans.

Live every moment of your creative life in the full knowledge that you are moving slowly and surely towards your destiny.

I realize there are other threads about this, but I wanted to present my exact issue I was having which I know may not be the same as other threads.

I think the biggest motivating factor for finishing my first draft was just to say "I finished the first draft." Then that feeling of completion made me tempted to think "Oh, I'm finished now so I can work on something else." In any case, I don't want to really snap my fingers and for it to be done. I just wanted tips about how to rekindle and maintain my passion.

Chilari's point was a good one. Thinking about the scenes I really enjoyed writing. There are a number of those, so I think the overall story will benefit in the end. I just feel like I have to rewrite the whole beginning and end. Maybe I won't. I just want to maintain my level of motivation to complete it and get that "completion" feeling again.

 

[skip.knox]

I hit the Horse Latitudes myself not long ago. One thing I did was to print it out and then start reading it aloud. That brought out both the writer and the editor in me. It reminded me of how much needed to be done, but it also reminded me that I have a pretty good story here and it'd be a damn shame if I didn't finish it.

You're at the point where you have given birth to the child, but it's not properly dressed and presentable for company. It ain't gonna dress itself.

And, like children, there's no harm in having another. You've got enough love for both of them! They're just at different ages.

 

[Devor]

I think the first thing you need is to get an honest impression of whether Novel 1 is worth finishing and why. Novel 1 - for all I know - could just have been your get-the-kinks-out novel. Or it could be an ironing job away from gold. So where are your mistakes and what should Novel 1 look like? Is that something worth finishing? How close are you?

Also, editing is not the same as writing. I would say, don't stop writing to edit. So, to get Novel 1 where it needs to be, how much writing do you still need to do? That is, you may have several chapters which need to be added or completely rewritten. I would count that as writing, but otherwise work on Novel 2. But I think you should set aside time to edit, distinct from time to write (if time is tight, maybe you write every other day... but don't stop writing to edit.)

 

[Weaver]

I hit the Horse Latitudes myself not long ago. One thing I did was to print it out and then start reading it aloud. That brought out both the writer and the editor in me. It reminded me of how much needed to be done, but it also reminded me that I have a pretty good story here and it'd be a damn shame if I didn't finish it.

You're at the point where you have given birth to the child, but it's not properly dressed and presentable for company. It ain't gonna dress itself.

And, like children, there's no harm in having another. You've got enough love for both of them! They're just at different ages.

"the Horse Latitudes" Excellent metaphor. I'll probably think of it again when I'm listening to "Southern Cross" and writing flashback scenes -- always a difficult thing -- for my current WiP.

I also like your elaboration on the "book as child" metaphor, like in that poem we had to read in high school. (First time someone paid me to edit, it was a screenplay that the author said was his baby, "and I don't want people to think my baby is ugly.") I don't think of my stories as my children, but I do think of the people in them as my friends and sometimes family (after all, Hrothgar Tebrey has the same birthday as me), and it comes down to the same thing: We're allowed to be friends with more than a small handful of people.

 

[Penpilot]

I was exactly where you were not too long ago. I'd finished my first novel and was editing it while I was planning my second. I was very eager to start the second novel.

While editing my first novel I took a step back and took a hard look at the flaws that the novel had and did an evaluation. The time required to fix the first novel would be longer than writing a new novel from scratch, with no guarantee that more issues wouldn't pop up. In hindsight my evaluation was true.

I think you should take an honest look at Novel1 and figure out if it's worth the time to edit it.

With my second novel, I didn't have anywhere near the issues I had with my first novel. And what keeps me going ahead in editing--even though some days I absolutely hate the novel--is how good it can be if I hit my marks as intended. Imagine the reader as they go through the book and hit those emotional high and low points because you worked your butt off editing. Or imagine someone cringing after reading the book because you didn't bother enough.

One of the ways I try to make editing fun is finding a personal challenge in the scene I'm working on. I first try to understanding the emotions I'm supposed to evoke in the reader in that scene and then I challenge myself to find ways to bring those emotions out on the page without using the word for that emotion, ever.

 

[ThinkerX]

Hmmm...

'Labyrinth' - Middle of rewrite number two for me...with an edit pass for grammar afterwards. Havn't touched it in weeks. I was somewhat suprised to find that fixing all the petty plot holes bumped it from 'novella' to 'novel'. (from 45,000 to 65,000 words). What is particularly irksome is that once I finish fixing the plot holes in the current chapter, I've only got one more section in need of serious touching up.

'Empire: Country' - Good News - I have a finished first draft. (been finished for over a year now). Bad News - About a third of what I've written is going to perish in the rewrite. I do have to add a couple of scenes. I've not touched this one in months...but the last time I looked it over, the core of it read far better than I thought it did. Probably long novellete or shorter novella length (25,000 words?)

'Shadow Sea' - This one vexes me. I wrote the original a dozen or more years ago, and rewrote not to long ago, fixing some major plot issues. It is intended to be a three or four part work (novelletes or novella's strung together), but while I have a passable draft of the first part, I don't have anything past that. It's not the plot that vexes me, its the tenses, which I usually have no difficulty with. I've not looked at it in months.

Past few weeks, I've been occupying myself by tinkering with some of the old challenge stories.

 

[JSDR]

If by Novel 1, you mean literally the first novel you've ever completed, and now your first, immortal love feels like a passing crush, it might be indicative of something else.

I'll lay down some *might be painful* truth here:
Perhaps, and really think about this, perhaps novel 1 was a gigantic writing excercise. Perhaps it was your brain's way of getting primed or warmed up for a bigger, better, more groundbreaking story. Perhaps it was your unconscious way of wading through the papyrus stalks in order to get a clear view of the ocean.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with putting novel one in a trunk, locking it up, and never looking at it again.

However...

If you feel, and be brutally honest with yourself, that novel 1 deserves your attention more than novel 2, then go back. There's no time limit. One month from now, one year, whatever. Go back and give it your heart. Give it your ALL. Edit it draft through draft. If you withhold attention, if you doubt your own story, it'll show in the finished product. Anything boring to write and edit will be boring to read.

Lastly, to address the whole "hot mess, overwhelming" factor, I offer these words:

How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.

(I usually start with plot holes, characterization, thematic development.
Then move on to language - where can I condense three sentences that say the same thing into one spectacular sentence? Where can I expand a description to make it as vivid as possible?
Then I move on to smaller things - specific words, punctuation, etc.
Then I pass it on to a beta.)

HTH,
J

 

[Philip Overby]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've decided to stick with Novel 1 first and foremost. However, it is true that I feel like, as JSDR said, "a writing exercise." I learned what to do wrong and what to do right. While Novel 1 isn't the first novel I've ever written, it is the first one that I actually completed a first draft. Others were 100s of pages, but just incomplete.

So what I've decided to do is write a new outline. In this outline, I'm cutting loads of characters and concepts that I feel are weighing my editing process down. The scenes and ideas I like, I'm going to keep, but I'm essentially going to have to re-write the whole thing. After going back and forth if I think it's worth it, I decided it was. I want to complete this novel as I promised it to myself. I hope to use what I learned and apply it to my re-write. In the past, I'd just discard the whole thing or put it on the shelf. But I decided a re-write is my best option and I can still keep a lot of what I've written so far.

Thanks again everyone!

 

[ThinkerX]

So what I've decided to do is write a new outline. In this outline, I'm cutting loads of characters and concepts that I feel are weighing my editing process down. The scenes and ideas I like, I'm going to keep, but I'm essentially going to have to re-write the whole thing. After going back and forth if I think it's worth it, I decided it was. I want to complete this novel as I promised it to myself. I hope to use what I learned and apply it to my re-write. In the past, I'd just discard the whole thing or put it on the shelf. But I decided a re-write is my best option and I can still keep a lot of what I've written so far.

This is what I ended up doing with 'Labyrinth' - and will end up having to do again with 'Empire: Country'.

I ended up cutting almost half of 'Labyrinth', rewriting the other half, and then writing a bunch of new stuff from scratch. Currently, I'm mired in the midst of the second rewrite, patching lots of little plotholes. (Then...sigh...I have to edit for grammar. Ugh.) Had I known...well, I still probably would have done it. The new version has a focus the old version didn't.

'Empire: Country' now...I have two sections, one long, one short, both core, that I believe will pass with merely minor alterations. I've another section which has a couple of good scenes...and some utter junk. For that matter, I've two sections which I'm going to have to junk, period. Then I got to write two, maybe three sections from scratch.