Drawing from the Well
It’s been a great week-plus of writing for me. All the character profiles are done (plus I figured out a better way to approach one piece of them for the future, so, yay!). With that behind me, we are back in the drafting world and it feels good. There was definitely some rust on the gears but it’s working out now and things are moving along. Since my last blog, I’ve written over 6,000 words and completed a couple of chapters. I’m still finding my way back into a writing habit, but we’ll get there. So, for now:
6,175 words written, 57,021 words total, approximately 49.77% through the first draft, 1/5 character arcs complete
Filling the Well
This week-plus didn’t see me finishing but a single book: Anatomy of Story by John Truby. It was magnificent and I can’t wait to re-read it and pick it apart so I can absorb the knowledge. Now, though, I’ve moved on to Gallant by V.E. Schwab. If you’ve been around my blog for any length of time, you know that she’s my all-time favorite author, so I devour everything she releases. Gallant is no different in my approach or enjoyment. I can’t wait to finish it.
22/100 for #ProjectBookworm2022
Well Chat
Now that we’ve talked about the Sweet Spot, let’s talk about one of the side effects of getting there: the cutting room floor. I recently heard an author refer to what they had removed from a first/early draft of their book this way as well as their process of preserving it for potential later use and it got me thinking.
From the very beginning, my loving, darling, brilliant wife, who is orders of magnitude smarter than me, advised me to never delete anything. Instead, she told me that each draft should start as a fresh document and make changes from there. Since she told me that, each time I move to the next round of editing, I copy the previous draft, whose latest edit is finished, and start the next edit from that point. It gives me fall back points if I really make a mistake. I have used the fallback point once I think, but what I haven’t done is mined the earlier drafts for nuggets of gold.
Those of you who write, like me, work very hard on each word that goes into each draft. When we cut things out, it can feel like doing our souls harm. What if we could harvest that work for later use? Granted, some of what we put into early drafts is just not good enough, but you never know if you never go back.
So this has led me to a new project. I’m not going to embark on it now; that would be a foolish errand. I’m drafting right now. I have to keep moving forward or I never will. The last four months since NaNo have taught me that. When I take a little time off after the first draft, though, as I always do, I need something to work on. If the gears don’t keep moving, they get rusty. During Book One, it was a short story that’s still partially finished. During Book Two, it was the short story that…well, we’ll get to that another day (but soon!). During Book Three, I want to go into the Cutting Room and start comparing drafts of my earlier books and pulling out what I cut. There’s a lot, especially with Book One.
What this will look like is having the early draft up on one side of my screen and the final on the other and literally going page by page to find things I cut out. As I find them, I’m going to copy them and paste them into little Notepad files and save them in the folder titled The Cutting Room. Then, every so often, I’ll go in there and mine for gold. There will be turns of phrase I like or world-building I forgot or dialogue I adore. I intend to find it and use it where I can. It’s going to be a fun, if laborious, exercise.
I know that sounds like torture to some of you and I totally get that. When I get into it, it may feel that way. But if it means that I might find something I forgot I wrote that I absolutely love, it could be worth it.
That’s all for this week. Next week, we’ll start a new series on writing processes and finding who you are as a writer. I look forward to seeing you then. Be well.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG