Sigh. It’s Day 8 of Nano and I’ve done nothing except stare miserably at a manuscript that isn’t working. I’ve known for some time that it wasn’t working, but it’s been such a busy month that I’ve been desperately hoping it was the busy-ness and not the book. But no, it’s the book. I already struck about a thousand words out of the manuscript (in half an hour, which was literally the only half hour of work I did in the month of October :p)
So today I’m staring miserably at the book and … well, I’ve stared enough now that I’ve probably figured out how to fix it. Now I have to accept the fact that I’m going to have to throw out several thousand words on a book that’s only 16K to start with.
You’d think that after 25+ books a person would find that easier to do, because it happens all the time. The truth is it never gets easier, at least not for me, and the one time in my life that I’ve had a short turnaround on recognizing I had screwed up, throwing it out and starting again, I was on desperately short deadline and just didn’t have time to dither about it. That time the entire process took about 3 minutes. Usually it takes days but it can easily take weeks and if I have the luxury of time, months.
Stupid writing. Stupid writer head. :p
Going to go kill more of the stupid book now. :p
It has been often and wisely said that you never learn how to write a novel – only how to write the novel you’re currently working on.