So this is a bit of a Book V Movie: FIGHT! post as much as a review of the book. Or whatever these things I write up are. Reviews seem much more…thoughtful, than what I do. Anyway. I went to see the movie Beautiful Creatures primarily because I like Emmy Rossum (whose part wasn’t large, but who chewed scenery when she had the chance). To my surprise and delight, I found the young man who played the lead quite charming, and unlike certain other films made from YA novels, I…
Yesterday morning as I was working in Starbucks, I noticed a woman introducing herself to a man who’d just arrived, primarily because she used the immortal and ear-catching words, “I’m the writer.” I spent the next hour or so alternating between writing and evesdropping as three more men showed up and were introduced. Someone took out a laptop and showed a video. Great delight was expressed. Enthusiasm grew. The project was discussed. A crowdfunding project was in the works. I was sitting there twitching and going “THOSE PEOPLE ARE OVER…
Me, worried: I’m at the climactic battle & I’m only 75k into the book. Ted, phlegmatic: You’re at the end, Catie. It always takes you until the third draft to get the end right. Me: But I don’t know if I’ve got 20k of wrap-up! Me, hours later: Oh, shit, I see what he was saying. It DOES always take me multiple drafts to get the end right & this whole book is The End. Riiiiiiight. Okay. No wonder this is so messed up. I have, in fact, completed the…
In the last several books I’ve written, I’ve noticed a tendency that as I approach the end, I leap ahead, write the end, then come back and fill bits in. I have been doing that for this whole bloody book. Now, I know people who work this way as a matter of course, but I don’t, and I don’t like it, and seriously, what’s that all about anyway? This evening I realized that it’s because I’m writing the end. I mean, yes, the end happens to be 100,000 words long,…
I was obliged to stop and remind myself today that in fact by any standards at all, a 5100 word day is actually very good. Even by my standards, which as we all know are completely lunatic. I’ve done 25 or 30K since Wednesday last. It’s not as much as I’d been hoping for, but again, in actuality it’s quite good. The problem, of course, is I’m not even vaguely convinced they’re the right words. I have no sense of the book and frankly think it all sucks. Ted and…