I am very close to finishing the first draft of HM. Almost too close. At the rate I'm going, it will be less than 200 pages long. However, I suddenly realized yesterday that I still need to add more conflict. The good news it that I know exactly where to add it. This time I will finish it as is and go back and add a little later--just prior to letting people read it.
I did not have my revelation during Morning Pages, which I am continuing to write daily, but not long after finishing them. Connection? Possibly. I am just happy to have had it. I think the more conflict, the better.
I think it's interesting studying one's own process or processes in some cases. The Writing Nag posted the other day about writing being like sculpting. You start with a large block of marble and chip away the extraneous. Someone commented that they write skinny first drafts and add on as they revise so they thought the analogy did not apply to them. I, obviously, build as I go. I know Deb does, too. Deb responded that the sculpting analogy applies if you look at it as working in clay rather than marble. Sometimes you add on, sometimes you scrape away.
Is your writing process more like sculpting in marble or clay? Or is it more like painting a picture, with daubs of paint layering one on top of the other?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Sculpting, all the way, with clay to be precise. Consider when the work goes to presses as the final glaze firing.
Totally.
Well, see, first there's a grape. And then it dries out. So it's like a raisin, see? And then you take a really sharp syringe filled with liquid...which may or may not be water...and then the grape is filled again.
Wait...wrong metaphor.
I'm with Stephen King on this, as well as so many other things. He says it's like finding a fossil. First you see just the little bit and with careful excavating, you find what you were looking for...but it feels like it was there the whole time, not like I really 'created' it. More like I stumbled on it.
My process is like vomiting words onto the page, then going back to clean it up. It starts out stream-of-conscience, and then ends with me editing without mercy. It ain't pretty.
Post a Comment