Sunday, December 2, 2012

Crappy first drafts

Anyone frustrated by a crappy first draft should read this, especially coming fresh out of NaNo.

10 comments:

  1. Hah! A very good read, esp. when working on a scene that is trying to work and feels like it is failing ...

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    1. ...you were the first person I thought of when reading that post ;)

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  2. I knew she had been asked to rewrite the book by her editor, but I had no idea that it had taken her 3 years to write that first draft. It makes me feel so much better about my super slow writing, LOL

    and Bitterblue is my favorite book of the series. Have you read them? so so good!

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    1. I've read the first two, but not Bitterblue :)

      When I take a couple weeks off of writing/blogging for the holidays, I'm going to try to catch up on my reading ;)

      ...undisturbed, I can usually get through 1.5-2 books/day

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  3. You must be a fast reader. guess I'll find out how many books I can read while flying. Got adaptors today for electronic gadgets - natch UK and Egypt are different. 3 years for a first draft, sounds about right but I edit on computer so my pages wouldn't look like those in the post.

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    1. Yup, pretty fast... with emphasis on the word "undisturbed" ;) Obviously it depends on the length of the books, too.

      I edit on the computer too, mainly 'cause I can't read my own handwriting, so making notes in that way would be an utter waste of time and effort :)

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  4. I know that feeling all to well. Thanks for the link! :)

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  5. GREAT link, Ms. Monkey! Yep, if I wrote by hand, I'm sure that's what my first drafts would look like--and the seconds, and thirds :D. One thing she says that's been kind of ricocheting in a whisper inside my head for a while now: start again from scratch. I'm resisting because I honestly need--must--have to get this story done and sent out and just be DONE with it, but perhaps I won't until I start it over. The way she describes mentalizing herself on writing a new book and then seeing which parts of the previous draft she can add to it does sound liberating. Argh. Ok, I'll think about it :)

    Thanks for sharing!

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    1. I know there have been a few stories of mine which would have benefited greatly from just starting over, but wading through them, chunk by chunk, was instrumental in illuminating where (most) of the mistakes were.

      Maybe I'm just a slow learner :)

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