Sticking a sword in it....

[j_cheney]

...and calling it done.

The ROUGH draft of The Devil in the Details, at 93.3K. ROUGH. REALLY ROUGH.

This will come out at 100K when I rewrite it, I believe, but I'm putting it aside for a while. I didn't pin on a purty ending, primarily because it's so rough that I suspect most of the last chapter will end up being trashed anyway. Thank heavens I have permission to write terrible first drafts.

This is officially my fourth completed novel....so am I not supposed to sell this one?

Getting back to short stories for the next couple of weeks, plus the plot bunny's epic.

Comments

[marshall-payne.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing all that, J. Yes, getting a late start has its advantages.

I think I told you I tried my hand at writing SF back in the 80s before deciding to focus on being a musician fulltime. But in 2000 I wanted to attempt writing fiction again, specifically novels. Writing four novels in six months isn't as amazing as it sounds. My problem back then was that I was writing 60k novels like were popular years ago. I had a hard time sustaining a longer narrative length. Finally figure it out for #5, which was 100k, and then #6 and #7 were 120K and 140k.

But those six months were fun. I'd type the end on one novel and the next day start the next one. I was brimming with ideas, if not much craft or technique yet. Still, I think I got a lot of bad writing out of my system. This sort of reminds me of Nano, which is happening this month. *sigh* I don't subscribe to the "turn off the internal editor" school anymore. I thought of making a post this week, "Just say no to nano!" but remembered I did something of the same thing back then so who am I to judge? But now my editor is always switched on. I really don't like to rewrite, so I try to get it at least close the first time around. :o)

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

By the time I get to the end of something this long, it's pretty sloppy. I always have to go back and reshape.