My actual writing of a decent draft of this novel continues. I planned to say "continues apace," which I thought meant "at a constant pace," and then I would clarify that while the pace is constant, it's quite slow. But I've learned that "apace" means "swiftly," so now instead you get a glimpse inside my writing process, where I pay close attention to choosing each word. And now you have some idea why it takes so long.
I began this draft about two months ago, and I'm still generally enjoying turning my plans into prose. I'm making a lot of changes from the outline as I go, but mostly at a level that only affects a scene or two. Sometimes the work feels like solving a fun puzzle as I figure out which pieces fit best where. Sometimes a cool new detail occurs to me while I'm in the middle of a paragraph—or when I'm walking down the street or taking a shower. Other times, I can't understand why I'm still in the middle of the same paragraph as an hour ago.
After two months, I'm perhaps one-tenth of the way through the novel. That's an exciting amount of progress! It's also so much less than I wished for. My dreams of writing this draft in six months are long gone. Even a year seems ruled out by the reality of the math, though with my eternally unrealistic optimism, I have hopes about speeding up.
But things take as long as they take, or so I've heard. I'm writing right along, continuing at my pace, and we'll be there when we get there.
Good Stuff Out There:
→ Rebecca Onion at Slate interviews Emily St. John Mandel about Station Eleven, 10 Years Later: "One thing that doesn't ring true to me about the book anymore isn't necessarily something I got wrong, but just the way our country has changed. When I wrote the book, I wrote a scene where all these flights are diverted to the nearest airport and everybody gets off the plane. They go to a television monitor tuned to CNN or something, and the announcer is talking about this new pandemic and everybody believes what the announcer is saying, which—I swear to God, that was plausible in 2011. At this point, absolutely not. I can't even imagine that happening."
1 comment:
Those last two sentences of the first paragraph are gold!
Why does it take so dang long?! Me: "Oh, this will be a fun story in which no research will be needed..."
Twenty minutes later, "So, what's that part of the inside of a watch called? And how did lumberjacks scale trees to top in the 1860s? OH! Sooooo much info...
"Now, to mull over each word to ensure it was the right choice..."
I really DO just kind of write, but at a certain point when it all makes sense to me, then it becomes a slog with all those things you mention.
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