Rethinking the Novel… Again
I’ve been working really hard on my novel all month - wrote almost fifty pages in just about three weeks! But then I had a meeting with my advisor on Friday that brought it all to a halt.
Essentially, what she said was that my overarching plot didn’t really fit within the world I had created, and that it seemed more like a series of unrelated events than a coherent story (well, she said it a little more eloquently and politely than this, but I’m paraphrasing.) And she was right.
Some of the things she mentioned I already knew were problems, but I was ignoring. Because of my time crunch - I have am amazing work schedule this summer, which I cannot sustain into the fall - I was focusing entirely on page count, just wanting to get as much out as possible and worry about the consequences later. But what’s the point of putting thousands upon thousands of words on paper if you know they’re not the right words?
I spent the weekend doing thinking-work (well, that and winning a chili cook off…) and I believe I now actually know where the story is going; all the little pieces are starting to fall into place. Of course, this means major revision and tossing out a lot of the work I’ve done in the past six months.
I think what I’ve learned most from this whole experience is just how much you really do throw away in the writing process. During the fall, I was working on an entirely different novel, which I got about 90 pages into and completely discarded. I currently have 146 pages in this incarnation, and I think I’m going to be able to salvage about 50. With screenplays I’ve been lucky (or naive) enough to get the story pretty close to right the first time around. Not that I haven’t had to rewrite, but neither have I had to throw dozens of pages out.
But the thing that surprises me most is that I’m not all that bitter or sad about having to throw away all of this work. There are a few elements in my current version that I really loved, but just aren’t going to work in the new storyline, and it’s a little heartbreaking to have to say goodbye to them. But I also know I can just save those ideas and maybe be able to use them again in a future project.
I anticipate a long afternoon in the coffee shop today trying to chisel out the details of my new plot. But that’s okay. Still a pretty nice way to spend an afternoon. The tea and oatmeal raisin cookie won’t hurt, either.
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