Edit Preemptively, Times 30,449
You might think that I've refrained from posting for the last four weeks because the holidays, the transit strike and a string of freelance deadlines has occupied all my available attention. And you'd be right, but that's not the whole truth. No, the reason I haven't been posting is that I've done a lot of hard thinking about my novel and where it's going, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to start again from scratch.
Until now, I've been working on a kind of frothy, amusing novel with a good strong spine and a modicum of heart, and of course there's nothing wrong with that. But the surface is too slick, the spine is too straight, and it's altogether too conventional to be worth the trouble. There's nothing bent about it. It's like I'm watching When Harry Met Sally when I really want to see O Brother, Where Art Thou? There's nothing wrong with When Harry Met Sally; it's one of my favorite movies ever. But it's not bent.
I'm not going to toss out everything. I'm keeping the one scene that appeared in my original dream -- The Amateurs came to me in a dream, did I mention that? -- and the general plot, of course. I'm not going to start writing a different book or anything. But I'm going to sit down with the nutty little characters I've managed to extract from my unconscious, and try to get them to tell me what they want out of life, what they intend to do to get it and what kind of world they want to do it in. It's going to go slowly, but I think it has to be done.
It's actually pretty exciting, I think. The more you work on a piece of writing, the narrower your options become. I had written myself into a corner. Now it's wide open again.
Word Count: 1,667 (-30,449)
Until now, I've been working on a kind of frothy, amusing novel with a good strong spine and a modicum of heart, and of course there's nothing wrong with that. But the surface is too slick, the spine is too straight, and it's altogether too conventional to be worth the trouble. There's nothing bent about it. It's like I'm watching When Harry Met Sally when I really want to see O Brother, Where Art Thou? There's nothing wrong with When Harry Met Sally; it's one of my favorite movies ever. But it's not bent.
I'm not going to toss out everything. I'm keeping the one scene that appeared in my original dream -- The Amateurs came to me in a dream, did I mention that? -- and the general plot, of course. I'm not going to start writing a different book or anything. But I'm going to sit down with the nutty little characters I've managed to extract from my unconscious, and try to get them to tell me what they want out of life, what they intend to do to get it and what kind of world they want to do it in. It's going to go slowly, but I think it has to be done.
It's actually pretty exciting, I think. The more you work on a piece of writing, the narrower your options become. I had written myself into a corner. Now it's wide open again.
Word Count: 1,667 (-30,449)
posted by kathy monahan at 11:43 AM
1 Comments:
I had a bizarre dream over the holidays that I considered turning into a creenplay for a horror movie -- I had knitted a couple of little baby outfits and then woken up one morning and there were actual babies in them. Creepy. But I'm not sure where I'd go with it.
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