(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

A quiet day. Had a wonderful conversation with archdiva, and actually got 7-and-a-half pages on my novel written. One of these days, I'm going to break my record of 11 pages of fiction in a single day. I don't count essays as fiction no matter how much bullshit is in them :)

I've been working on overall plan for the novel -- a plan to put on paper and stick to, which may help me avoid the complete re-writes that caused so many problems with my unsuccessful first novel. My first draft will establish the plot as a skeleton -- and I intend to keep writing no matter how many non-plot problems crop up. I'm between one-third and one-half finished this phase.

Once I have it on cyber-paper, I'll go back to the drawing board, and write up a series of copious notes -- characters, history, data, maps, and -- for the science-fictiony/fantasy elements -- "rules." All of these in excrutiating detail. It may seem strange to do this on the second draft, but during the first, the characters are still fleshing themselves out. I'm not sure what shape they'll eventually take.

After that, I'll begin the second draft, and flesh out each scene. I like a poetic register of language even in prose (like Atwood's Survival, or Joy Kogawa's Obasan, or much of Timothy Findley's Famous Last words), but that is very hard to do while focusing on plot. This part will be about better developing the language used and the characters and their backgrounds.

The third draft -- the final before I show it to friends for second opinions -- will be the elimination phase, where I get rid of anything superfluous.

When I hit the second phase, my writing will become much more time-consuming, because I will have to get working on my short stories as well. One of the reasons I re-wrote my first, unsuccessful novel 11 times from scratch (losing the plot in the process) was that I need to do enough first-phase writing in a day in order to burn my fund of creative juices. A day without new writing just isn't complete for me. That means switching those energies to short-story writing while I flesh out the characters and language on the skeleton of the plot.

This means the second draft will be more time-consuming, because I'll be working on collateral projects.

I understand I have this thing called school I have to do, too. But since I've been sleepwalking to straight-A student status, and since I have one really good teacher next semester (less reading, more thinking), I doubt school will be too much of a problem.

I think this plan can work. In all, I think it's safe to conservatively estimate being done all three phases by this date next year, November 23, 2006. That is my goal. Hopefully then I'll have something worth showing off.

Comments

[archdiva.livejournal.com]

I really had a great time chatting with you tonight. Thank you so much for all the effort and time you put into mu chart calculations. *kisses*

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

No problem. It was a great conversation for me, too (I have to cultivate those) and as for the chart, it was good practice. I was starting to get rusty ^_^

[archdiva.livejournal.com]

You did just fine. lol

[ubergreenkat.livejournal.com]

cool.

I've just started in on my second novel - the first one lies abandoned in drawers, old notebooks and on several diskettes in case it needs to be reborn - but I think this new one has more potential, it's less emo anyway. We'll see. Cheers to a plan for yours, though! I'm aiming for first draft done by next year, I think it's a good thing to shoot for.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

We shall compare notes on November 23, 2006. Having someone else keeping track of these things is an excellent impetus ^_^

Keep the old diskettes and notebooks. One day, they shall be released as your "juvenalia" and studied by professors :)