It has been a few days since my last post. I’d been traveling for work, and spent much of the weekend working as well so writing the last few days has been minimal. Yesterday was Day 8, and through Day 8, I am 811 words ahead of pace. That sounds good, but things are a bit deceiving, and this is where setting a daily writing goal can be problematic.
Although I’ve written 4,800 words, only the most recent 1,700 are part of the novel now. The other 3,100 words have been tossed because they weren’t right. (They weren’t deleted, as I don’t delete, but they have been crossed out in the manuscript. So despite having averaged 600 words per day over the first 8 days of writing, I have only 1,700 words of acceptably story to show for it.
You see the flaw in a plan like this, right?
Fortunately, for me, this is fairly common at the beginning of a story. I stumble around a lot trying to find the right point of view from which to tell the story, and trying to find the right voices for that point of view. I started in first person, thinking that was how I wanted to tell it, but quickly realized that wouldn’t work, at least, not for the entire story. There are things the reader needs to know that the viewpoint character doesn’t know, and that is hard to do in first person without some kind of special talent, like telepathy, which this particular character does not have.
So I switched to third person, and rewrote. But I struggle more with voice in third person than I do in first. Moreover, I decided that I was going to move between characters, although never within a scene. So I needed to come up with distinct voices for each of the character viewpoints thus far.
Finally, I couldn’t figure out where best to start the story. I think I mentioned that it takes place in two distinct time periods separated by about 60 years. I tried starting at the beginning (in the earlier time period), but couldn’t seem to get to the heart of the matter quickly enough. The sense of overall urgency in the story was lacking. So I tried again, this time from the latter time period. That seemed to work better. Yesterday (my best day so far) I wrote 1,700 words covering the first two scenes, and I think I have things finally going the way I want them.
As one who does not outline (pantser instead of plotter), I also finally have a sense of the general direction the story is going. Right now it looks like there will be three overarching “parts” to the novel. The first and last will take place in the latter time period, with the middle part (a fairly big part, I think) taking place in the past.
I haven’t written yet today, but I know what comes next, and I am eager to write it, and that is always a good sign.
This difference between how much writing I do toward the first draft, and how much stays in the first draft is tricky, however. If I am aiming for a 90,000 word first draft, it is completely conceivable that I’d write 100,000 words or more, only 90,000 of which end up in the draft. To that end, I’ve added another element to my logbook for my novel. This is a green bar. Each day, that bar will indicate a cumulative count of how much of what I written is in the first draft. Stuff that I’ve cut won’t show up in this measurement. As of today, therefore, things look like this:
I expect to get in some decent writing this week, and over the weekend. Next week I am traveling again, so we’ll see how things go.
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Generally, I’d say I’m an outliner. I write a LOT before I get to the story — usually that includes an outline and even a synopsis — I like to tell myself the general story before I write the story. That does NOT mean, however, I know where I’ll end up 100%. I’ve heard the advice that, for a first draft, you “shouldn’t edit or revise” — but for me, I CANNOT keep going if I have something contradictory before it. So there’s a LOT of revision in my process.
I rewrite whole chapters before I am able to keep moving, and since I’m pretty linear in my first draft process, it can be a lengthy process. The downside is, while I’ve tried to keep track of word count in the past, I feel a daily word count goal just becomes frustrating to me. I’ll see the total word count number hover at the same spot for days, even though I know I’ve been working at it.
Now I wing it. I have an overall word count I’m aiming for, and I know how much each chapter should probably be at (again, a lot of pre-work gives me a good idea of what plot needs to happen when. I’ve been told frequently one of my strengths as a writer is my pacing, and I think it’s 100% due to this process). My goals now are less “This many words per day” and more “This many chapters per week/month.”