one more draft…

so, after all the excitement of last friday’s post, i enjoined you to return today in the expectation of reading news of the completion of the book.

for this, i apologize.

sadly, i got lost. what i thought had been completed and overcome, only led me to more questions and obstacles, which further derailed my progress. i have long known i can be an obsessive stickler about things like continuity and what i consider to be believability. i am generally let down by stories (written or visual) which treat me like a simpleton, who doesn’t care how one scene connects to the next, or whether a character’s past makes his or her choices realistic, or, most infuriatingly, those moments of painfully obvious deus ex machina, which seem but thin veneers for a lack of forethought.*

not only does this make me almost impossible to watch films or television with (just ask my beloved and saintly wife), it makes it impossible for me to write such scenes, even when these shortcuts would save me a lot of time and effort. as a result, i spend days banging my head against a wall trying to figure out a believable, realistic way for a character to deal with a situation, rather than simply skip over awkward scenes, create cliffhangers to hide weak plot points, or other such devices.

on the other hand, though, this means i have a tendency (surprise) to get wordy, and this is one of the things i work hardest to fix in my work. Ex: Witness was originally almost 650 pages long; the final draft is 325.

less doesn’t necessarily equal better, though (just as more doesn’t), and i continue to work toward a balance between depth and brevity, between detail and motion.

balance, however, is key in this, and the failure of my ability to remain balanced in my schedule this weekend led me to actually try an all nighter last night, in an attempt to finish the book’s penultimate scene.** over the weekend i wrote more than 6 pages of notes and scribbles and outlines in my work to conquer the obstacles that continued to appear (note again the importance of a detailed writing outline). this did finally lead to a genuine breakthrough, and spurred me to push onward, straight to the end.

a little after 3:30 this morning, however, as i wrote the 4th page of this final scene, i realized i was trying to rush it just to get through to the end. i’ve talked about this concern before, to just get to the end, but this time i was suddenly aware that i was doing it without bringing all my skills to bear. i was writing passages that i knew immediately would require revision, and this is not what i wanted.

i have tried to write the vast majority of this book’s first draft (with one notable exception in the middle), in as complete and polished a manner possible, to minimize my revision process. when i found myself writing just to be able to write ‘i finished’ here on the blog this morning, i knew i was in the wrong place. i have a great feeling for this scene, and I’ve been looking forward to it for too long not to give it the attention it deserves, the first time around. i don’t want to cheapen my own enjoyment of the experience.

with this in mind, i went to bed. i should’ve read last week’s blog posting, eh? it would’ve saved my wife the distinct frustration of dealing with my overtired, oversensitive self. i can be an ornery, stubborn old codger in the best of times. without sleep, though…

so, when will i be finished?

soon. -ish. really.
(with the first draft, at least.)

 

* make no mistake, though, i have my exceptions, particularly with stories/films from my childhood. In most cases, though, you really can’t go back.

** i’ve already written the ultimate scene, interestingly, which has been an excellent way of focusing the rest of the story, and has kept me true.

following tuesday’s excellent work, progress was derailed when i got the rug pulled out from under me in other areas of my life on wednesday. the event caught me blindsided and i let it carry over to thursday, normally a good writing day. as a result, i spent an hour and a half trying to write and utterly failing.

these things happen, though, and at least i tried, so that counts for something. sort of.

anyway, i’m pretty much through that, now, and this morning saw some more work, though not actual story writing. i hit a little snag with the final showdown when i was trying to work through the funk yesterday, and it caused me to doubt a fairly central theme of the story so far. not a good thing. as a result, i started questioning my ability to write the final scene, as it is, inevitably, a cascade of that central theme.

bleh. not a fun place to be.

however! i recognized what i was doing, and sat myself down this morning with a plan to stop theorizing and questioning and doubting myself. instead, i put pencil to paper and forced myself to write all the concerns. in the process of so doing, of forcing the explicit articulation of the ‘problems’, i was able to more directly address them:

problem: if char. X has decided to blah and blah, instead of blah, then she can’t do blah as i had planned in the outline. this means that char A and B are not the blah, becuase they wouldn’t have seen blah.
response: but why can’t X do blah? follow that out. if she does the other things instead, doesn’t that mean that A and B are actually…

…and so on, until, not very much later, i was back in control. or, well, perhaps not control, but my confidence and understanding were back in place, and i’m looking forward to the end again, with some very cool evolutions and discoveries.

in fact, i discovered better ways of handling a couple of situations than i had originally intended, adding more depth to a pair of characters who, in hindsight, were only slightly more than cardboard cutouts before.

i suppose i owe wednesday a big thank you.

check back on monday!

… is allowing myself to sleep.

i had such high hopes for this weekend, book-wise, and that was my mistake. i’ve made it to saturday morning, ‘book-time’, with the end of the book on sunday morning, but i just couldn’t get any further. i delayed my school work until this afternoon, and i had more than a little to do, there, and there were all the leaves to be raked, the trips to the dump, the dog to walk, oh, and my wife to spend a little time with between frenzied writing sessions in the garage.

i had been toying with the idea of an all-night session to bull through and finish, but, again, my wife came to the rescue, reminding me over dinner that there was no specific need to finish this weekend, and that finishing on Tuesday or Thursday is just as good.

Yeah, that means no marathon look-at-me-i-pushed-through-and got-to-the-end writing challenge, but it also drastically reduces the chances of me staring into my cereal bowl in the morning and hating everything i just wrote, not to mention probably getting sick from exhaustion and screwing up my classes because i haven’t slept in 48 hours, because, well, i’m not twenty-one anymore.

not that i don’t think i could do it, mind you…

from the very beginning of No Good Deed, i’ve had a single untied storyline hanging out there, like a lone wisp of hair that keeps dropping in my face. i know what it is, i know that it’s not resolved, but i haven’t been sure how to fix it. i don’t want to cut it or curl it or dye it, but i need to find a way to get it to fit in the hairstyle that is the larger story.

okay, killing simile now.

anyway, i’ve tried forcing it a few times, or bringing out elaborate backstories to explain it, or even just ignoring it and hoping the reader will, too. i heard this last method described once as ‘writing fast enough to keep the reader from looking around too closely,’ otherwise the inherent flaws in the logic would become glaringly apparent. i don’t think i’m skilled enough to pull this off, though. so i continued to be stuck, believing it belonged, but not knowing quite where.

my in-between classes writing today seemed to be taking me decidedly off the main track of the story, which is more and more a concern the farther over my intended limit i get. i grow scared that i am losing focus and actually getting further from the end, rather than nearer, as i write. my main character found herself taking a drive out into the countryside on an errand i had not foreseen. i was seeing the ‘do not pass’, ‘detour’ and ‘stop’ signs pretty clearly in my head.

however, and this is the key, the words were coming along far more smoothly than i had anticipated, so i took the ride with her. i allowed myself this diversion, more the sake of writing than for the sake of the story, with the clear expectation that i would hit a dead end soon enough. i would then chop this section, and get back to business.

4 pages later, i believe i have the surprisingly emotionally compelling answer to the riddle of that unresolved storyline, and i am again of the belief that i am merely a vessel, or an observer, and i am deeply grateful.