November Books: 1/6 (The Story of the Treasure Seekers)
Hey ho, squiders, hope your November is going well!
Here we are, a week into the month. I expressed my intent last week to do a Nano-esque challenge this month, and laid out a couple of options about what I could potentially do.
Those broke down into novel/novella vs. interconnected short stories, and then something fun vs. something hard.
I made a list of potential projects and then started whittling them down. I pretty quickly decided on a novel/novella vs. the short stories, because a number of short stories seemed like it might quickly escalate to the decision paralysis I am trying to escape from.
And then mostly I went on vibes for the rest of the elimination process, so we ended up with a something hard novel, in the end.
I decided to try my hand at the interlocking lives idea I’d expressed an interest in trying, though it morphed in the outlining process so it’s not really quite the same thing I was picturing, but still an interesting adventure.
I spent Nov 1-4 outlining and worldbuilding and designing characters, and then I’ve written 2K a day for the last 3 days, so I’m currently sitting at just over 6K (I have yet to write today).
Is it going well? Well, it feels like some of the worst crap I’ve ever written, honestly. Like I started in the wrong spot, and my characters are boring, and I have questions about how confusing it will be to the reader to switch back and forth between the two interconnected characters.
That being said, I still feel great. This is more than I’ve written since my writing retreat earlier this year, and that was rewriting, not drafting. And I suspect I got a little spoiled by Hallowed Hill, which was the last novel I wrote from scratch and which was essentially a perfect first draft. I basically only had to go back in and clarify some internal arc points when I revised.
But I am reminded that even with that, I started in first person and then switched halfway through the first chapter to third because the first person was just not working for me.
So, yeah, the writing is terrible. But it is writing and basically anything is fixable in revision, and I am out of practice and so it should get better as we continue on. And if I get to the end and the draft is unsalvageable?
Well, that’s okay too. Not everything needs to be published, and practice is practice. Writing is writing.
Fingers crossed that everything continues to go well.
See you next week, squiders!
