ieva melgalve » first draft http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry A writer with a goal: to learn to write well and edit better. Sun, 16 Jan 2011 19:37:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3-beta2 fear of rewrite http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry/index.php/2009/10/30/fear-of-rewrite/ http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry/index.php/2009/10/30/fear-of-rewrite/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:42:36 +0000 ieva http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry/?p=472 This is going to be short, short one.
Yesterday late, I realized I hate rewriting so much because I hate to admit I was wrong the first time around.

For the purposes of critiquing I invented a term “good first draft” to, you know, give an impression that I’m being nice. Maybe I should recycle my own garbage, saying “my story is in the stage of a good first draft” with the most serious, professional, I-know-what-I’m-talking-about expression. “The stage of the first draft is a tool for identifying the underlying theme of the story that is, ideally, a surprise to its own author (since isn’t writing just that, a discovery of one’s own mind and soul?), and it would be impossible to know the theme before writing the story down. Thus, the first draft is the process of wading neck-deep in the snow to reach a destination unknown; but you don’t want to get your reader cold and wet and trudging along, cursing you and your words, so you go over the same tracks, choosing the most straightforward route (that still has a great scenery) and laying tracks. It still will be challenging, don’t worry, but at least you won’t lose people along the way.”
Ahh, well. Time to stop rambling and go to work (OMG, the time!) and do that last personal crit along the way.

]]> http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry/index.php/2009/10/30/fear-of-rewrite/feed/ 0 First draft done! http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry/index.php/2009/10/19/first-draft-done/ http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry/index.php/2009/10/19/first-draft-done/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:32:56 +0000 ieva http://www.creativity.lv/birdcherry/?p=457 After 2262 words today, Vega is finally finished. Two final scenes written, one of them will need to be reworked massively, but the last one almost made me cry. I also ended just a tad before 81 000 words, which is a pretty good number for a first novel.
I am now a bit too exhausted to believe that I’ve really done it. Besides, I miss my characters already. I now get the reason why people write sequels: but on the other hand, I suppose that during the edit, I’ll be sorry I didn’t kill them all off when I had the chance.

Anyhow, it’s time for some cider and some celebration, a good book and a frantic whatamIgoingtowritenext jitters.
No, no, just a book. It doesn’t even have to be good.

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