Thursday, March 10, 2011

March 10th

Yesterday I took a slight breather from writing and focused on the house instead, because, let's face it, the poor thing was looking more than shabby.

Then I reread the story and kept smoothing out little loose ends that I think no one else will notice, like why is her hair in a braid in this scene? When did that happen?

So I have the entire first draft written out, beginning to end, and everything in between is up to speed, at least as far as I can see at this point. The straw house came out brilliantly, if I do say so myself, exactly as it should be.

It's so funny. I tell you what, if you yourself write and you periodically get to points where you think, "This sucks." I'm telling you, pay that no mind. Ignore it, put a little bookmark in the section and move right on.

I had no idea how much the ending would inform the middle; there were things I couldn't see clearly until I'd gotten way, way past that point and then suddenly, bang! I knew, and could go back and redo it.

And there is no way, there is just no way on God's green earth that you can capture everything the way you want it, in the first writing of it. It's impossible, simply and completely impossible.

In fact, it's perfectly acceptable to briefly sketch out a section like "Insert description here" and then move on and not bother with description just then.

Maybe these are the things I would have learned in a creative writing class, if I'd ever gone. My therapist keeps getting after me to go to college, she thinks I'll go when my children get older. She'd make a bet, if she was a betting woman.

I don't know, I don't care. All I want to do is write. (And, sooner or later, raise a few children.)

To that end, I have been thinking a great deal about what I will tackle next and I am torn between taking on the Sephiroth story or making a book two of the rosemary faerie tale. I am woefully uninformed about either choice, since I have at this point, no idea what I would be writing them about.

The faerie tale is exactly half what it should be in terms of word count, it sits at just 40,000 words, or a little over a hundred pages. I need twice that to get to the lowest typical word count for a novel, 80,000 words.

So, I'm thinking, why not take another faerie tale, deconstruct it if necessary, and bend it to my needs for the second half the Rosemary story. After all, I've left strings dangling, I couldn't see how else not. But now I kind of want to know- what happens to the Princess? Does the King try and get some revenge for the failure of his plans and his daughter's humiliation? Did the Magus die? I leave all these things unclear.

Answering them cannot be the point of the second story, those things must be answered as the second story unfolds with its own, wider purpose.

Or I could leave the story pretty much as it is, and move on. I'm going to be doing some brainstorming today, trying to figure out in which direction to go. I could work on both ideas for a little while and see which one takes hold.