Source:
Fiction-66
Well! So ends the tale. It didn't set out to be a novel, but we so rarely set out to be the things we eventually become.
Did you like it? I did! I mean, let me be clear - already there are a hundred-hundred things I want to fix on the 2nd draft, and even paging back through entries now I get a little nauseous and upset with things, but I had a lot of fun writing it. More than fun; the exercise of writing a novel helped me get through some bleak moments this year. There were times when it was the only creative activity that I was happy with. Knowing that I was making progress made me feel better about everything else in life.
And I like what it became, warts and all. So much so that, even though the 2nd draft will most certainly incur a good deal of revision - I'm resisting the impulse to break it down to what other stories are. Clear victory over adversity, 3 act structure, all of that sort of thing which you know you've seen a hundred times before. This doesn't need to be that kind of creature. It grew up the way it wanted to. I'll clip some of the excessive wording, and maybe shuffle the order of events a little, but overall I want to enhance its rough edges, not sand them off. Confusing and contradictory perhaps, but a unique thing - that's the future I envision for it.
Needs a title still, and maybe a few other bells and whistles, but all that's still to come. I promised to put it to bed for at least a couple months, and I'm sticking to that.
But what of the blog? What of daily updates, what of Station Idents, what does the future hold?
I promise to check in and drop some thoughts regularly. It'll be a bit quieter for a while - I need to regain some energy. When I do swing into editing pass number one, I was thinking maybe I'd post about what I'm doing and why. Again, not because I want anyone to use it as an example necessarily - just to show you the process. I love it when my favorite writers post scripts, notes on the context of a scene, where they were in life when they wrote it, why they decided to structure their creations in a certain way. So hopefully I can do the same, on the off chance that someone out there might benefit just by seeing what it is that goes on behind the wizard's curtain.
And eventually, there will be more writing. A New Thing, this is guaranteed. So go get some air, visit some new sites, think some things. Create. We'll be here when you get back.
This was merely a beginning.
