Getting Back A Glimmer of Excitement

I am getting back a glimmer of excitement about HiS.

I finished the rough draft September 17th and spent three whole weeks agonizing and angsting about it (much of which I poured out here, so if you stuck around after all of that, you must actually like me) because all I could see were PROBLEMS.  Pot finally diagnosed the malaise as being due to the fact that I had absolutely unrealistic expectations of this first draft.  Even though I went into it saying that I knew it was a first draft, that I was going to make myself push through to the end without stopping to go back and polish, that I was going to just get the story down, when I finished, I honestly expected to have something that would be able to do a quick two month fill in the blanks and polish and have ready to send to someone, even if it was just a selective round of beta readers.  I did not expect to be totally rewriting a new draft because I had plotted everything out, damn it!  I figured it all (well almost all) out before I started writing.  This is supposed to save me time, right?

Obviously I was very, very, VERY mistaken.

So that was very discouraging and made me fall very much out of love with the book.  For a week or so there, it made me fall out of love with writing even.  And then I got a clue.  I had an idea for how to change the beginning and immediately, seriously up the stakes for Marley.  And that led to me finally starting to figure Marley out.  Who she really is, and what she’s about.  And how she needed to change over the course of the story.  And I figured out (with a great deal of valuable input from Pot) how to make that work within the confines of the story I’ve created.

So, yes, I’m still having to essentially rewrite the entire book.  But I have a clearer vision of what it needs to be now.  And, as Pot pointed out, I’ve already been to this town, lived through a lot of this story, hung out with these characters.  In theory, this draft should go quicker.   Sometimes you just don’t get it right on the first pass.  And that’s okay.

I’m starting to get excited about it again, and after the Dark Period of the last month, that’s both unexpected and gratifying.  In my grand planning, I would like to have the bulk of Draft 2 plotted out and entered in WriteWayPro by the time I knock out the novella.  Which I expect to take in the vicinity of another 6-10 weeks depending on–well, life.  It would be nice if I can get my crap together for both the novella and my class such that during the two weeks of Christmas break, all I have to do is upload my lectures and tests, etc. for the class and can sit down and hammer out a fair chunk of the beginning of Draft 2 before work starts back in January.

Hope springs eternal.