So, here's the deal. It's 90 days until my birthday, and one of my resolutions is to have an agent-ready draft by then. Three months to hone what I've written into shape, adding scenes, deleting scenes, knitting it all together so the scars don't show.
Last night, I was reeling from a headache too much to consider how I was going to do this. For NaNoWriMo, I knew I had to write x amount of words per day, with a secondary emphasis on scene generation. Now, it's different. I have all the parts. I just need to bring them together. That's the good news. I should make 90 days no problem with that.
The bad news is, I know already I have revisions I need to make, along with new scenes that will need to be written. Plus, there's the anxiety of This Is It, when I get to the point when everything I've been working on for years comes to some kind of conclusion. Will it be good enough? Will it have that tell-tale flatness of an author struggling to finish a piece? That's the problem with rewrites. The bloom is off the rose. You know the punchlines to the jokes, so there's the temptation of slattering on more of everything. How do you make it more interesting without making it overloaded?
Back before my childhood imploded, my dad and I used to work on things in the garage. One of the prayers he was mutter would be to know when to stop tightening the wrench, lest the nut would shred or the wood would snap from the torque. Art is the same way, and I hope that I find that narrow patch of wisdom between It's Good Enough and Just One More Turn.
Because I'm more type A than I'd like to admit, I've figured out a battle plan.
Jan. 10-Feb. 10: Rewrites to the tune of 1,000 words a day (and/or reconstruction of two scenes)
Feb. 10-March 10: Revision by a couple readers (plus a writing teacher I know, who has agreed to read the manuscript, God help her.)
March 10-April 10: Rewriting again. More eyes looking at it. Corrections. Draft the letter of inquiry. Research the target agents. Send.
Which means giving up a lot of distractions, which is good. I need the discipline again (you can take the boy out of the Catholic Church...). So, it's precious little DS time for now. Very little TV, save for Battlestar Galactica and House. I mean, I have to have my killer robots and medical misanthropes, right?
2 comments:
wow, you seem to have it all down pat, with a plan and all. that should make for an awesome birthday gift to yourself. goodluck!
Thank you, but I think I missed a step in my big plan: Namely, change my blood type to caffeine.
I have writing group tonight, which means I'm going to be down a day, which sucks because I was amped to write something this afternoon.
Stupid job, always getting in the way.
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