First times

I wrote this a while ago, I think back in last April. I never realised that this had never been posted. So I thought - why not? This was both an odd and a familiar feeling when I started to read, and hopefully it will be good for me to look back when I finish up. Have I gotten any better at doing this whole regular writing thing in a year? Maybe. I'll read this again and decide later.

In case you were wondering, my money is on that I have possibly wasted a lot of time that I could have been a little more productive. As I said, I'll read and have a think on it. We shall see.

First times are great. Except… when they’re not.

This is the first time I've succeeded in finishing a story of anything over short story length, (courtesy of nanowrimo, which boosted my word count from 25 000 words written in what, two years -  to something around 75 000 words) and the first time I've had to really think about editing.

Editing is a joyous thing. Its taking the drek that seems like some never-ending thing that I can’t see the good parts from the bad, and working through it to find the rough diamond that I’m reliably assured lies in the heart of all manuscripts. Its picking through the dumb lines, mistakes and typos. Its finding out that time after time, I've used the same word two sentences running, something which I think would annoy the hell out of me were I reading it.

Wait, I am reading it, and it annoys me. It also bores me. My goal was to run through the whole story looking for the things that don’t make sense, the plot elements that go nowhere, the missing bits. After reading the whole thing through, I was bored. I bored myself with my own writing. Yep, there were fun bits, and certain parts I thought were quite clever. Yep, in all probability, those are the parts that are likely needing stripped out at some point.

Yeah, its almost definitely true at some point.

Currently I’m at page 55 of approximately 8 million as far as I can see. I won’t give up, but I think I started this some time back in the stone age. At the rate I’m going, I think humanity will either have evolved into a higher state of consciousness, or nuked itself over so many times that our mutant forms may actually be able to mate with spiders.

In any case, woven through all this new editing stuff is realising that there’s something wrong with the story. Its the way the climaxes don’t work properly or something, maybe the beats are wrong (if that’s what I’m actually talking about), or off. Its there. I can feel it, and I don’t have enough awareness of story to tell me what it is. Hopefully I’ll figure it out in the next pass.

Yes. The prospect of doing this all over again is filling me with excitement.

Really.