My Next Project Begins!
Or: What to Write When You Have Nothing to Write
Man, I want to be more regularly active on here, but I can’t think of a single thing I want to take the time to write about! So I’ll write about writing. Easy.
I recently finished revising the draft of my Pride and Prejudice college-setting novel, which was a bit of a whirlwind at the end. I was so into it that I neglected like…everything. Well, not the kids. But the house. Etcetera. It actually felt really good to be swept away like that.
I’m slowly working on submitting the novel draft to agents, but I don’t want to not write. So I move onto my next novel, a Persuasion-inspired novel set in two time periods: a high school German-immersion language camp, and several years later in the haze of post-college twenty-somethingness. If that makes any sense.
And that, of course, means I’m faced with a blank page. Yipes! But I know what works best for me is to just write. Once I get the Shitty First Draft (thanks, Anne Lamott) onto the page, revision is so much easier. It’s like building a house on top of a frame. You wouldn’t just frame it and add the detailing all at the same time, right?
Well, maybe that metaphor is flawed. Maybe the outline of the novel is the frame. But then what about the Pantsers out there! So I’ll say it again: the Shitty First Draft is the frame of a novel. It’s definitely not the end product, but it’s at least something to build off of.
Which brings me to my next point. (Well, not really, I’m just shoehorning it in. You’re welcome.) I like to come up with systems for my life, even if I’m no good at following through with them. So here’s a new system I’ve come up with for writing a novel in a year.
My New Process
It’s an easy formula: Four months planning & exploring, four months Shitty First Drafting, four months revising. (And then, bonus! Four months working on submissions while planning & exploring the next novel. Or maybe more than four months. Depends.)
In case you need me to elaborate:
Planning & Exploring. This is where I figure out what it is I’m writing. You could say I’m coming up with the blueprints. See what I did there? I’m the worst about exploring characters and creating backstory, but hopefully the four months I’m allotting to this exercise will help me create more realistic characters who aren’t just…storybook me.
Shitty First Drafting. This is the part where I write like mad and get all of everything on the page, good and bad. Mostly bad. We’re talking at least a thousand words a day. No stopping to think about the terrible turn of phrase I just came up with, or the word my brain just can’t quite produce. Hammer that frame out.
Revising. This is the fine-tuning bit. The part I love best! Where I put in the cupboards and countertops, slap paint on the outside, put shingles on the windows and get doors in the frames. Okay, now I’m definitely taking the house-building metaphor too far. (SOMEone’s been watching too many video blogs of builders on YouTube at the request of her 4-year-old…) Four months should be enough time to revise, but if I find it’s not, then by golly, I guess I’ll just adjust things next year.
Writing a book is the weirdest process in the world, and something tells me it can’t be systematized just like that. (Is that a word? Systematized? Guess it is now.) The most important thing, I’ve come to realize after finishing my last project on a wild bent, is passion for the project. I did something like this with what I call my Zombie Dream Novel, but I never felt passion for the main characters, so when it was through, it was through. The book is finished, and I’ll probably never pick it up to revise it. Well, maybe I will in five years. But a whole lot will have to change. But then, isn’t that what the frame is there for?
Well, now I’m just thinking through my fingers. This will be a fun experiment! Follow me on the journey. The planning stage started September 1, so by the new year I’ll be ready to start in on the drafting. In the meantime, I’m gonna go make myself a second cup of coffee and get to work. Well, after I get my kids up, fed, dressed, off to school, and the baby down for a nap. Because I do have a regular life I have to carry out before I can disappear into my writing world…
mins
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