Skip to main content

Done! dun dun dunnnn (cue ominous music)

The novel revisions are done.  DONE!!  Finally.  Which means it's time to move on to crafting query letters, researching agents and steeling myself for the process.  Again.  Because I've been done with this novel before, or thought so anyway.  And while I could probably tinker with it for the next ten years, I feel like it's time to declare it done.  I'm happy with it, I'm proud of it and I'm ready to let it go.  And, more excitingly, I'm moving on to writing new stories.  This week I've decided to write super short, super weird stories, to shake off the long form and remember what generating new work feels like.

But I wanted to capture a few things I learned about writing a novel along the way before I forget:

  • It takes 47 times longer than you expect it will, even if you are convinced you have realistic expectations.
  • The first ten times you think you are done, you are wrong.  (The next ten times are probably just procrastinating) 
  • Revision can actually be incredibly satisfying, and one of the weirdest/coolest things about writing is reading something you wrote a while ago and being surprised by how good it is.  One of the most awful things is reading something you wrote a while ago (or yesterday) and realizing how utterly terrible it is.
  • People wish your story sounded more interested the moment after they ask you what it is about.  
  • Writers don't always like to hear about other writers writing a novel.
  • Writing a novel can hurt your neck, shoulders and wrists, but there is no workman's comp.
  • Writing is something you can do just about anywhere, but for some reason it's really hard to do while on vacation, as much as you were looking forward to doing just that on vacation.
  • Feedback is essential, but so are mental boundaries around the feedback, or rather, a translator.  I envision this like the Babel Fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: it pulls useful feedback from out of the hurtful or misplaced feedback, separating them into their proper receptacles: Useful goes in the compost, Misplaced goes in the recycling and Hurtful goes in the trash.  
  • Feedback that hurts is probably 99.9% of the time not meant to hurt you.  And you might have deserved the other 0.1%.  
  • It IS easier to write a novel if you don't have to work full-time.  I'd always suspected it!  :)
So there you have it.   Onward to new stories!

Comments

  1. Done! Done has got to feel so good. Way to go on finding all the personal grit and tenacity to get to done.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Litquake 2012 Report

I've been avoiding putting this together, because a part of me really doesn't want this year's Litquake festival to be over already.  The other part of me is still cranky-tired, wandering around trying to get to all those projects I said I'd get to after Litquake, and feeling post-Christmas like. In short, this year's Litquake was AMAZING.  Every year has been awesome, but this one was particularly special for me because I got to actually help plan the awesome.  As a volunteer during the festival for the past several years, I definitely felt like I contributed to making each event I helped at awesome, but this year, being on the committee,* I got to witness the tremendous build up to the festival that happens the whole year prior.  The amount of love, sweat and time that goes into it is incredible, and I'm not sure I've ever been part of something so cool.  Which is not to say I'm not still cranky-tired and looking forward to feeling fully recovered.

Writing Exercise #2 for Setting as Character

Today I tromped all over San Francisco to collect sensory details, photos (and a snack or two) from each of the neighborhoods that my novel's characters live in.  Now, they are not real people, but they do live in a real city, so the fun of it all is finding little details that I would never have noticed before because I'm trying to look for them through my character's eyes.  I discovered a few inconsistencies that I'll need to go back and fix (silly things like the wrong bus line, or the fact that type of architecture doesn't appear in that 'hood), and found a few details I will want to pepper the text with.  Mostly, I just had a really fun time walking all over the city (I clocked 6.5 miles of walking!), and BONUS, the water in my apartment was shut off for the day so it really was the perfect excuse to get the heck out.  Oh, and the weather was about as gorgeous as could possibly be.  Okay, now I'm just annoying myself with my own happiness.  Here are som

What To Expect When You Are Expecting A Pandemic

“When I think about all that has to transpire to get from pregnancy to the birth, I am overwhelmed by time and the unknown. It’s not useful to contemplate. There is only today, and it is good.” I documented my move from ambivalence about parenting, to IVF, to motherhood, as well as all of Year One. I did it longhand because that’s what I did back then. So now, finally, I’m typing all those pages up, in part because of the great What If that living amid a pandemic creates. And I came across this yesterday and it is so true for the current moment, for this, the fifth week of Sheltering in Place. Ways this time is like pregnancy: It can make you fat. It will definitely make you crave near-constant meals and snacks. You will swing from feeling good to anxiety-laden, angry, irritable and back again several times a day. You will want to know how this will all unfold, how hard it will get, exactly how you and your life will be changed. You can’t know any of that. Ther