Actually Writing

Since last week, I've been actually writing an actual draft of my current novel! I'd set myself a deadline to reach a stopping point on outlining and other planning, and move on to writing down the words and sentences of the story. I had to extend the target date by a couple of weeks (fortunately I'm on decent terms with my boss), but the deadline successfully moved this endeavor forward.

And it's been great! For a while now, I've had trouble staying focused on work for as much time as I intend, and I worried that writing was going to feel so much harder than planning and therefore even more difficult to stick with. But on the contrary, my writing sessions have kept me absorbed for hours in a row. I guess I do like writing after all, not merely having written.

It's still a slow process, and I'm only a few scenes in. There's some further planning I'm mixing in with the writing as I go, but I expect to keep inching along through the early section of the novel. Once I reach a certain point, I may need to stop writing for a little while and make decisions about some elements that remain vague. My hope is that figuring out these pieces will be easier with part of the story fleshed out.

Though I have all these open questions, I've mapped out the big picture of the entire novel. After two earlier drafts that were more like extended brainstorms, I'm glad to set off this time with confidence about where the story is going.

The outline is serving as a guide, but already in the course of turning plan into story, I've made small adjustments such as introducing details in a different order. With any luck, I'll avoid significant changes to the largest pieces, because the interlocking plotlines are carefully balanced, so one change could require many others. But I'm staying attentive to what makes sense for each scene and letting the story evolve within the framework of the high level plan.

And now, I'm eager to get back to writing!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Maris Kreizman at Literary Hub describes her experience contributing to the New York Times Best Books of the Century list: "First I tried to define 'best' in a way that felt right for me. I settled on the books that changed the way I viewed the world, or changed my idea of what a book can do or be. If you’re a real book lover you know that 10 slots to cover 24.5 years of books isn’t nearly enough to convey everything that's wonderful. So I created some of my own guidelines, namely that I wanted my list to be representative of what I, Maris Kreizman, read: mostly fiction, with some narrative nonfiction and essay writing thrown in."