I tend to get very reflective as I approach the 100k word mark in any manuscript. I think it's brought on by a combination of looking at my outline and seeing how much I still have to write and looking at the notes I've been taking along the way and realizing how much I have to change or add in. I don't have enough words left if I want this book to be a reasonable length! And for the thousandth time, I admire those who can write with brevity. I'm doing well in terms of my personal timeline, although I'm growing skeptical about finishing the first draft as soon as I thought I would a few months ago. Oh well, plenty of extra time built into my schedule!
Still, my first draft (so far) for this manuscript is better than my first draft for my last manuscript. I've learned a lot from my previous mistakes. The problem is, and always will be, that there are plenty of new mistakes to make. Even with an extensive outline, there are instances where the plot reveals it's more shoddily constructed than I had anticipated, character motivations need reconsidering, or details need to be added earlier to support the current events of the novel. I suppose encountering new problems a good thing, though, or else writing wouldn't be a challenge anymore, and I'd probably go bored with it. And the fact that I can recognize these problems even as they arise is probably more indicative of growth than I would expect. You can't fix a problem you don't know about, after all.
Still, it might be nice to sometimes feel like a super-genius. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.
1 comment:
I was just experiencing this feeling last week. Here I am, recent MFA in Creative Writing grad, and my writing group was telling me all these elementary mistakes I made. And I thought, "In many ways, I'm not a novice writer. But in my many ways, I still am." Always a learning process.
And, how about I trade some of my brevity for some of your length so we can both always hit the mark? ^_^
Post a Comment