The Terror of a Looming Second Draft

I had a creative writing teacher when I was a kid who used to tell us that there was no such thing as writer’s block.  I’ve lived by this mantra ever since; sure, sometimes you don’t know where a piece should go, but if you just sit down and put a pen to paper (or fingers to a keyboard) it will go somewhere. If you don’t end up liking it you can throw it away or fix it in the second draft.

It’s that second draft part that’s posing the problem.  A first draft is allowed to be junk; it’s just words on paper, explorations in character and theme and voice. You shake all that good stuff out of your brain (along with a fair handful of crap) and just let it lie.  Then in the second draft, you shape it into what you want. With the second draft comes expectations.

I finished the first draft of my novel the last week of July, and told myself to take August off to get some distance, planning to jump back in the first week of September. 

That didn’t happen.

In the intervening 7 weeks I’ve had several trusted writer friends read it for me and give me feedback.  I now have a pretty good idea of what’s working and what’s not working. The problem is I really really want to write something good.  I want to get published, and I feel like I need to represent myself with the strongest possible work because there aren’t many second chances in this industry.  This, of course, means my second draft has to kick ass.  And while I have a few ideas on how to make it better, I’m yet to convince myself that any of them are New-York-Times-Bestseller-List-worthy.

And yes, there’s always the possibility of a third and fourth and fifth draft, but I’ve never been a third, fourth, or fifth draft writer.  I’m a second draft writer.

Draft One: Barf out ideas
Draft Two: Sculpt barfy ideas into “art”
Draft Three: Polish and glaze

The manuscript is sitting on my desk, it’s fat pages wrapped in an orange rubber-band. I know I just have to do it. I have to pick it up and write. I have to let go of this second-drafter self-image.  I have to stop thinking that whatever words next come out of my mouth have to be simultaneously comparable to Faulkner and Isabelle Allende and David Sedaris.  I just have to get out of my head, put my fingers on the keyboard, and write.

Here’s to hoping putting these thoughts down in cyberspace will be just the kick-in-the-pants I need. I still don’t believe in writer’s block, I just need to recover from it.

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.

Writing: The Profession Most Likely to Accidentally Land You on a Terrorist Watch List?

Good writing is good because the conflicts are strong and the plots are intriguing.  Of course, this means it often has to include stuff that’s not part of the writer’s every day life.  And so to learn more about these exciting, obscure, dangerous things, we writers do what every lazy, red-blooded American would, we Google.  And this, of course, leads to an interesting cache of searches.  For me, these have included:

• The names of the clothing the Taliban required male citizens to wear after taking over Afghanistan
• Algerian methods of torture
• How to do a kidney transplant
• Photos of Jack the Ripper’s victims
• How to launder money
• Soviet Era weaponry

From talking to other writers, I know I am not alone in my clandestine searches… if I’m not on some sort of government watch list, the Patriot Act is failing us.

And So It Begins… www.kellystorr.com

After finding out I was not going to be able to continue my job at the USC writing center this fall, I decided - in lieu of getting a “real job” - to start an online flash boutique (meaning it only lasts for a short time) selling hand-crafted jewelry and writerly items to support myself while I finish my thesis novel.

I’ve spent the past week making up prototypes and designing the website (so if you’ve talked to me this week and I mentioned that I was only sleeping 5-6 hours a night, now you know why) and today is official launch day!  Yay!

Some of my favorite things include: Googly eye cufflinks, hand painted laptop sleeves & ebook covers, and vintage key necklaces.

So check it out.  Buy something and help support one writer trying to do what she loves.  I’ll be blogging about my experiences throughout the month here, so keep an eye out and monitor how it’s going.

Thanks for your support!

www.kellystorr.com