Oct 24
Na-Na-Noo-Nie-Ni-Mo…
I am reminded by Wil of “The Daily Snooze” that National Novel Writing Month – “NaNoWriMo” is the actual abbreviation — is coming in November. It’s that masochistic practice in which one sits down with blank paper on November 1st and theoretically produces a novel by November 30th.
Fortunately for me, November sweeps takes precedence, so I won’t be able to join in the madcap hilarity. Not that I’m complaining, you understand. I have yet to master the “just get the words on the page and worry about the details later” mentality of writing. Part of me wishes that I could, but I have such a great fear of saying one thing about a character or place in chapter 5 and saying the opposite in chapter 23 that I have to make myself notes and go back occasionally and double-check what I’ve written in the past.
I’m working on chapter 36 of my work-in-progress now, but there’s a problem with a scene in chapter 6. Okay, I take that back: not a problem, really, but a missed opportunity that makes what’s happening shortly after chapter 36 not as serious as it could be. So as hard as I’ve fought the temptation to press on, knowing that I’ll have more than enough time once the first draft is done to go back and rework that scene, I just can’t stand it any longer. I’m going back to chapter 6 to make a few adjustments. Nothing earth shattering, other than it will change the pagination of the manuscript and I’ll probably want to reprint what’s printed now just so I have a new, fresh hard copy when I’m in my copyediting mode. (Nothing wrong with that, I guess.)
My hat is off to those brave souls who take the challenge of producing a manuscript, or at least 50,000 words of one, in a month’s time. Even if what they ultimately publish is nothing like the manic prose they’ve produced in those thirty short days, if it helps them get that much closer to a finished novel, more power to them and Godspeed!
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October 28th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
I see you’re reading Ghost Story by Straub. I *love* that book. It was one of the first horror books I read. The characters were painted so clearly that when the movie came out a few years later, I said, “Yup.” Every actor they cast in that film fit Straub’s descriptions perfectly.
I think I re-read Ghost Story about two more times since. The book is definitely a keeper.
Tanya
November 6th, 2005 at 11:11 am
AMEN!