by Mayumi-H | May 7, 2012 | Excerpts, Fearless, Process
I know I’ve said a million times that you shouldn’t go back and re-write until you’re finished…but, rules are made to be broken.
The “original” draft of Chapter 11 moved things along at what I thought was too quick a pace. There was too much pluperfect recap in the first two pages or so that just felt rushed, to me; an “info dump,” of sorts. So, while this does not change anything that happens in the chapters following, and while it may very well end up hitting the floor when I do my first big edit (in which I’ll likely cut about 10-15% of text), I’ll at least have gotten the words down.
The sofa wasn’t very cosy – it was too short for him to stretch out properly, for one thing – but it was a hundred times better than the chairs in the CCU lounge or in Amber’s room, which were barely comfortable enough for sitting, let alone dozing. And it was hours closer than his own bed, to which he wasn’t quite ready to retreat, yet, with Amber still alone at hospital. Still, he managed to drift into a fitful sort-of sleep, waking just past six with a crick in his legs and a rotten-tasting dryness in his mouth.
Stumbling to the bathroom, he managed to find a bottle of mouthwash and freshened up a bit with that. He washed his face, too, pausing to take note of the dark circles under his reddened eyes, and the uneven two-day growth of beard on his face. He smelled of nervous sweat and musk, as well, but there was little to be done about that, beyond a cursory wash of pits and appendages at the sink.
As shit as he looked, though, and as shit as he felt, he knew that it wasn’t anything compared to what was waiting for Amber. And it was for that reason more than any other that he frowned at his own ridiculous vanity, swiped the spare keys from the kitchen counter, and jogged back to hospital as quickly as he could do, ignoring the fresh rain that pattered down around him.
There are few things worse than waiting in one of these damned chairs.
(photo courtesy visualphotos.com)
Maybe I originally glossed over a lot of the hospital scenes because writing them has been so difficult for me. It means going to a place inside of my memories that I don’t like to visit. Except that the pain and uncertainty in those moments of just waiting, not knowing, can’t be approximated any other way. Not by me, at least.
I don’t enjoy hurting these characters, who are such a part of myself. But through pain, we grow. And Ross needs to grow, if he’s going to be fearless.
Have you ever relived a painful part of your past, to get more in touch with the heart of your story?
by Mayumi-H | Mar 31, 2012 | Fearless, Process, Uncategorized
I wonder how many writers out there are like me, and keep relatively close at hand previous drafts of passages, scenes, pages, or even chapters? For every story I write – even those 100 word challenges – I keep a separate document, where I drop all of the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that don’t end up in the final draft. Some of these “unused” documents are small, of course, but others are hundreds of pages long. When I was writing 1 More Chance!, I put entire scrapped chapters into that standby document…!
Most of the time, what goes into the scrap heap stays in the scrap heap, but, on occasion, I go back to the well. Sometimes I do this just because I’m bored, and it’s interesting to see what I’ve edited out. But sometimes, I’ll pick up some discarded piece of prose and find a new use for it, with a new group of characters or a new situation. (Does this mean I’m plagiarising myself?)
A “draft” of any of my stories will usually undergo a great deal of change from inception to completion. That’s not to say that I don’t know what’s going to happen in beginning, middle, and end. But the plot (especially for the longer stories) will jump from Point A to Point D to Point G, before moving on to the originally-planned Point B. Even Fearless has done that, a little bit, and I’ve known since the first sentence how that one is going to progress.
I suppose that all of this has to do mostly with the fluidity of stories. It’s not an issue for me, despite what you may glean from the above musing. I just wonder if I’m the only one who holds on to everything to come before. Not that I’m going to change the way that I write. I mean, I like letting the characters and situations take over, for a while. After all, doesn’t that help to make the writing true?
by Mayumi-H | Feb 24, 2012 | Process, Uncategorized
This post came from a dialogue I recently had with my husband. I lamented that I didn’t think I was doing things “right” for the romance genre, and that maybe I should change parts of the story (specifically, my heroine’s backstory and the circumstances around her meeting my hero). He didn’t exactly put his foot into my behind and tell me not to start rewriting the beginning, but he did ask what it would accomplish for the story. And he managed to bring up a plot point – a very important one, actually – that would be radically changed if I went back and switched things around. That conversation – and its associated realisations – are what prompted this post.
Most any real writer – whether professional or amateur – would agree that rewrites can lead to doom.
I’m not talking about the necessary editing that occurs with all work: where the writer and his or her editor (or editors) go through the story as a whole, make notes, and decide on changes. Those rewrites are good.
I’m talking about the rewrites that occur in our heads. When we get frustrated with a story and think, “What am I doing wrong?” That’s when we are in danger of stopping our progress and going back to “fix” things that may not even need fixing at all. When we somehow decide (usually in a fit of depression or anxiety) that everybody else is doing this so much better, and if we wrote just like him or just like her, we’d be successful and the masses would love everything we put down on paper.
While that last sentence is a fallacy in and of itself, the real danger here is not really in the changing of a story. Any or all stories can change, over time. Most of them likely will. Some stories are almost living things, metamorphosing from a simple idea to a more complex one (or sometimes vice versa).
No, the danger, here, is the stopping progress part, the going back to fix part. It’s likely not the right thing for me to use this space to yell at you fine readers, but I speak from experience:
Never, ever do this!
When we stop moving forward with a story that isn’t yet finished, that story is in danger of never becoming finished. And a story that isn’t finished won’t get published anywhere. Worse, though, in my opinion, is that that story falls into Limbo. The characters are left hanging, the plot remains unresolved, and there’s another couple hundred hours lost to…what? Nothing?
Switching gears helps a lot of writers to get back on track. There’s nothing wrong with that. Taking a break is also a great idea for many of us. We can’t concentrate 100% on the same thing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and not get brain-strain from it all.
But, for pity’s sake, force yourself to finish your story before you start to go back and change huge chunks of it. A large percentage of want-to-be writers are only want-to-be writers because they never actually finish anything. Be part of the few. Even if the story is crap, at least it will be completed crap. That’s more than most have to their name.
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