So I sat down today, with the new and improved outline. And then I had a moment where I was like, what am I doing, the story is fine, I should just keep going from where I was, so then I thought about that for a while, and stared at it for a while, and doodled, and played with Itunes, and then I realized I did need to rewrite it with the new outline, that my character, he simply didn't have enough to say to fill up 800 pages, so I absolutely had to shorten the plot.

This is, of course, the same conclusion I've come to several times before, but my rewrites have all been such failures, that I'm sort of punch-drunk and unsure of myself.

Anyway, it took the course of about 2 hours for me to come to this conclusion. And when I finally did come to it, the writing slogged. Man, writing sucks. This explanation of my head process makes no sense to the outside observer, and it's terribly boring to read about, but I go through this sh** all the time. Doubt. Temerity. Writing. Editing. More doubt. More temerity. More writing. More editing.

Labels: Writing Process

My old writing club, affectionately named WC, short for, you guessed it, water closet, was never really a writing club, but rather, as many writing groups devolve into, a drinking club. So a couple of weeks ago I answered a Craigslist ad for a writing group looking for a new member. I met with the leader last week and after some discussion decided to join. They're very prolific and serious... hopefully this will pull me out of my shell a little bit. I think having some other people's opinions around might help with this infinite loop I seem to keep caught it with the novel.

Grrrrrrr.... So a couple of weeks ago I outlined the book. And then, this week and last, I began working off the new outline. I felt sprightly. I felt good.

On Monday, though, a niggling feeling of doubt began to creep in. Something wasn't right. I was taking a big chunk of material, and trying to jam it into the beginning half of the novel. I felt good about the first half of the novel...it's the second half that needs work, but in my head and in my outline, I needed to jam this stuff into the first half so that I could get the second half to work.

The jamming--it didn't work. So 10 days later, here I am, sinful and sorrowful. Starting a new outline...

Labels: Writing Process

I have an office! Back in January, during the 30 days straight of rain here in Portland, my basement writing space with zero natural light was making me feel very isolated, so I took the drastic measure of renting out an office space in the ActivSpace building downtown. The logic was that being downtown in a building with lots of artist types would give me an opportunity to make some connections.

Well, I've been here a month now and haven't ventured outside my door. Still, the natural light rocks...

So the release of World Leader Pretend has been pushed back to the Winter of 2007. Yes, I am chagrined. However, because I am a small fish in a very large ocean, and because I fear being eaten by sharks, I will hang out amidst the kelp until they come with the dolphin protection team and let me swim. (Holding back... holding back...)

So that's all I will say...

I've been working on VMP of late, and it's been, well, a bust. I kept writing pages, and more pages, and more pages, and the plot, well it went nowhere. I was up to 575 and I wasn't any closer to the end then I was at 300. Anyone who's ever written a novel before and run into a snag as massive as this will know how depressing it is. You've written almost 300 pages of garbage, and at an average of 20 pages per week that's about 4 months worth of work (4 months!) and now you have to throw it away. You want to take a gun to your head. It's awful. Why did you do this? Why are you a writer? You could have made a million bucks, or contributed to world peace, or had a love affair, or at the very least enjoyed yourself and your wife and your family, but instead you toiled over some pages that you now have to throw away. So your down, and your depressed, and you think of a lot of ways you can escape, like chucking it all and moving to the big island of Hawaii, and then, one morning, you wake up and look at your damn novel that you fucking hate and you know you can't throw away the whole thing, you have to fix it... so, you make an outline, and the outline, it grows, you spend days, weeks on the outline, and then one day you wake up, with your outline in hand, and OMG you have to start writing again. It's painful. It's awful. Oh wait. Oh hey. That was good what I just wrote. I can do this! I can save this! I have new ideas! I can use some of what I wrote. I can use it here! I can use it there!

And then, there you are, back on page 300, starting over again, hoping, praying, that the plot you outline doesn't unravel on page 575 again. (And the thing is... it probably will)