Finish the second draft of my novel.

of actually reading a little bit of my book, which I haven’t touched in months.

I was disheartened at the awkward language… it’s supposed to be formal, but I don’t like formal writing… I need to find a way to balance the formal speech of the characters’ society with the more dynamic language I prefer.

I also thought that I did not start with a very vibrant scene. In Media Res. Will it work? It should work. I just haven’t found the opening. Why are beginnings so hard? Almost as hard as middles. I like the ends best, when all the threads start coming together and all of a sudden, it doesn’t look like a tangle, but a tapestry.

Another day where I am brave enough to take up the pen is needed.

I wrote two days ago, but mostly this is going in the back of my brain while I am working through other things.

Gotta get back to it.

Gosh, I finally feel as if the draft I am working on will be the one I can show people. I hope it keeps going in this direction.

Trying to switch things up with my writing habits and my mindset.

Sat down, after putting the kids down for nap, in my bedroom with my laptop and started writing… that was when I realized I needed to change some things.

Deleted one whole chapter and half of another. Might have deleted the first chapter, but I didn’t even look at it. I went from 93 pages/ 29105 words, to 46 pages and 14,331 words.

The thing I just did, just now, is look at what I had, what I had written, both in the first draft and the second, and see what the form of the book should be. Structure. In order to maintain that structure, that whole chapter had to go. This led to the added bonus of getting rid of a lot of the blah blah.

Tell you the truth, I am not even sad to see those pages go. If they are really important, I saved them in another file, and can slip them into the book somewhere else. I can look at them and take out the information that I was trying to get across and slide that in elsewhere, too. What I have left, I am a bit more excited about, because maybe the book is starting to make sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a pretty elaborate outline when I first sat down to write this book. I didn’t just write by the seat of my pants, but it was still kind of a mess. I suppose all first drafts are crappy. My revision was still holding on to that old outline, even though my understanding of the book had grown and changed. I changed it a little, but pretty much it was the same.

It’s kind of funny that I probably took out all the work I did in my last month of work. My “write a page a day for a month” month. But I still do not consider that work wasted.

I really needed to get back into my book. I needed to work with it every day so that I could live in it and understand it and consider it through out my day. Maybe one of the reasons that I was farting around with my daily writing was because I knew on a subconscious level that I was not quite going in the right direction. Of course, I needed to be writing to discover that. Perhaps I also needed the time spent NOT writing to recognize it though.

I guess that’s one of the reasons I didn’t get worried that I did not write a page a day, because rewriting is more than just sitting down and pounding out pages. I mean, look at today, I chopped off half my book and have made a huge leap forward.

The process, my friends, is often more important than the output.

wow. Now I feel much better about not exactly meeting my challenge.

It keeps going back to the girl’s voice. What do I do now? Struggle to find a way into the omniscient voice? Stick with the girl’s voice? Or maybe accept that my original plan of alternating narrators is what is needed for my story.

I do not know. I suppose I will just keep writing until a solution is clear. Although it is true that if I stick with the alternating narrators, then it will be easier to revise. Not that this should be the reason for choosing to stick with this pov. I do know that switching the first chapter to the youngest girl’s voice instead of the middle sister did make it come alive and got the character out of her head. Now, if the sister wants that information to come out, she has to actually SPEAK to someone else. Or do something.

I did write over a thousand words today. And that’s a good thing. One Hundred Thousand more to go. I don’t know why, but that makes me laugh.

It occurred to me while I was in the shower [being a Scorpio, I get a lot of good thinking done in the shower] that my novel should actually be in the omniscient point of view. It is an epic sort of story, and epic stories kind of demand omniscient pov.

It is not my normal instinct to use omniscient narrative. I generally tell much smaller stories from an intimate point of view, but I think omniscient narrative would solve some of the story problems I was wrestling with.

I don’t know why I always have such a struggle with the question of pov. I feel like picking a pov closes off some options of what my story could be… of course, every choice one makes closes off other options. But that’s how stories and lives are made, making choices.

Ugh. I always have problems with making the Point of View choice.

My first draft goes back and forth between the three sister’s points of view. All third person, but each person’s story. Now I think that complicates the story too much.

My second draft has started with the youngest sister’s point of view. As the youngest, she is awakening to life at the same time the other characters and in fact the entire colony are awakening to their new home. So that I like… but the second sister is actually the one who… well, starts the most trouble. She gets into messes, particularly the main mess that brings about the climax, she challenges and never just lets things lie. These characteristics are good for action.

Maybe I get too caught up in these questions. It’s an important question, though. Maybe I should think through what each perspective choice will mean to the development of the story.

some of my original notes and outlines. The characters and plot have developed in the writing of and subsequent thinking about the book. It makes me a little nervous, because I seriously doubt I will be able to do any significant rewriting before I do nanowrimo to write the second book.

But then again, maybe it’s not a terrible idea to write the second book before I rewrite the first. I can then include all the discoveries I make while I write the second draft.

So it will be:
OCTOBER:
create an outline, create character profiles, write character arcs—and actually, I would like to revise the original outlines and character arcs, because it’s changed so much.

NOVEMBER:
write book #2. Mythos Broken
whip out as many words as possible. The first book is something like 140k words. It took me half way into December. But I didn’t have two kids and my #1 kid was taking long, luxurious naps. I’ve got to be even more focused this time around.

DECEMBER:
finish book #2, Mythos Broken. then go back to book #1 and finish the second draft. Take a break from #2 once the first draft is written.

JANUARY: Finish second draft of #1. Take a break from #2- don’t even look at it until February.

FEBRUARY: First Pass Revision of book #2

I need to take a look at nanopubye to see what their year’s schedule looks like. I don’t know if I will follow it, but I might use it as a guideline.

So, this entry has helped me decide that my trying to finish my second draft of my first book right now is not the best use of my time. I do actually think I need to do some more worldbuilding. I feel like there are holes in that. And there shouldn’t be, because the Republic is “worldbuilding” and trying to create their utopia, so I am building that utopic world. Which I will then tear down. he he.

It’s been tough. My get up and go has got up and went.

I haven’t been writing. Lost my writing practice, but that’s okay.

I did some re writing while the tv was playing tonight (I don’t suggest this habit) and wrote 3 new pages. I stopped because of exhaustion and my mom visiting.

Maybe my energy is starting to come back. I think the baby slep through the night last night. Maybe that’s why.

And do some writing.

I have been so out of writing that I could really use the concentrated focus.

Well, hey, what am I doing babbling on about it? I have a few minutes right now.

—haha. fooled ya. baby’s up.