It has been a difficult few months A lot of personal stuff has happened and I've found a sense of helplessness/paralysis has come over me in regards to my writing. I now have multiple works of varying length in progress and everywhere I turn, I see horrible, cringeworthy errors. I'm starting to wonder if I will ever, ever get anything to a state where I would actually be happy to send it away to a publisher, agent... let alone an editor. I hear the phrase 'polishing turds' thrown about and... *whispers* I don't want to be one of those people who send a draft to an editor and expect him/her to work miracles.
Now I gotta be honest here. I'm still hit and miss at the whole proofreading thing. Sure I've picked up a few things such as using a consistent tense, how to avoid head hopping and to not put Inappropriate Capitals Letters in the middle of sentences (see what I did there. Hahaha...ha...ha). yeah, I still do that
actually, it's like a cute wee writing quirk except it's completely retarded. I really only use commas correctly half the time and Semi colons and em-dashes confuse me (Oh that looks right, lets just put that there for now.) But only half the story isn't it? What about a plot that makes sense, character motivations, depth, clarity of ideas...style, voice. My head is spinning right now.
As I slowly inch closer( and saying at a snails pace is being charitable) to finishing this fantasy novel number 1, The Rising. I'm becoming aware this monster is literally that, a monster, a kaiju, a leviathan, or a big fat purple thing...
The Fantasy novel is coming up on 200,000 words and she's not finished yet. Already that's an eff-load of words to rework, polish, tear my hair out over. Seriously, I'm gonna end up bald with keyboard indentations in my forehead.
I have trouble polishing a 700 word short story to the point where is vaguely acceptable...but this! WHAT WAS I THINKING!
I feel daunted just thinking about it. No, daunted isn't quite strong enough word...
And so I keep getting paralyzed by this sense of complete and utter overwhelm...ment???Is that even a word? Nope, I don't think so.
So regarding that fantasy novel. I'm going keep at it because despite its current lack of polish/prettiness, it has one hell of a story. The ideas behind it have held my imagination captive for years! Angels, revelations 20, nephilim, some gooey blood magic, lots of romance, a tonne of violence, and some wacky metaphysics. It's gonna be worth the slog in the end, I hope. I recently re-read the second part (which is 80,000 words long) and there were times where I was left speechless, thankfully in a good way. Oooooh shiny ideas, so much potential...lovelovelove. Did my worn out, scatty, toddler-harassed brain really write this? Whoa! Sparkly!
I wish I could share the scene I just wrote yesterday but I can't, it reveals too much, you have to be lulled into this dark world I've created, gently or else...
I CAN DO THIS! Write this thing, Yeah! *waves pompoms.*
Righto better get back to work...
I'll just leave this here...
I too know about rewriting something written and rewriting it again until you have different versions. You might want to stick with the purest version of the manuscript, the one where it is the most simple and sublime. Grammar errors happen to everyone. Perhaps say you are done with that editing section, move on, and concentrate on those parts of the story itself that really bother you. There is always the chance, in the end, you are just being overly critical. However, writing and completing and REVISING the novel you have always had in your head is a major step and it deserves to be sent to as many publishers as possible. Someone will love it, I am sure!
ReplyDeleteAw Thanks JD, I so needed that encouragement :) and the advice too, I will keep it up- someday this thing will be as good I can get her. Completion seems a long way off at this stage, but I will keep chipping away at it-- as you say, polishing section by section and fixing those really broken bits first-- and hopefully it might actually come together. I usually have to do at least 3-5 drafts to get my 3000 word short stories close to where I want them-- trying not to think about that fact right now (eek!). :) Hows your novel writing going, are you currently working on your longer project?
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