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This blog has been mostly abandoned. Past and current posts can now be found on SeanDay.net. There you can find out more about Share the Road, the journey to publication, my current writing projects, and other writing news.

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Final cut

I spent the month of October doing what I thought would be a final edit of Share the Road. I wanted to get the edit done before changing my focus to the new book, and I thought that going through the novel would also recharge my writing battery for NaNoWriMo.

If I haven't lost count, this would be the fourth edit of the book. Each round seemed to dig a little deeper, make finer corrections, but they would also add new things to the story. And each time something was added, it was fresh material that needed to be tweaked and corrected.

For the fourth trip through the story, I decided to print it out. For some reason when something is printed out it is much easier to detach myself, and read what is actually there instead of what I think is there. Problems don't seem to jump out as readily when I am staring at a computer screen.

Reading through it on paper, smaller problems seemed bigger and I was able to focus in word choice and eliminate some repetition that had slipped through the cracks. When I was finished, it felt like it was about ready for a new audience. I set it aside for November.

December 1st I left the new novel at the halfway stage and returned to Share the Road. It had been in the back of my mind while I struggled with the new story, and I was hoping to get it completely finished by the end of the year so I move on. I sent off a copy of it to a friend for a typo check, and decided to give it a final read-through.

And I am still making changes.

It has been said many times by a number of people, a book is never really done, you just finally have to let it go. If you are fortunate enough to be a professional writer, a deadline forces you to stop endlessly tweaking it. For we amateurs, you have to force yourself to stop in order to move on. A book doesn't come alive until someone reads it, and if you endlessly rewrite it, it is almost as if it was never written.

This is my last time through. I have a couple more chapters on my read-through, and my typo/grammar check should arrive in a week. I need to get this book out of my hands before I do anymore damage.

Back up

I write regularly in coffee shops and libraries. I am more easily distracted at home, so I am constantly carrying my netbook around. I am paranoid about losing my novel through either theft of my netbook, or from a computer crash that I can't recover from. I don't want to imagine losing my first novel. I don't know if I would have the strength to write it again.

I have been using the online service DropBox. Dropbox is essentially an online drive where you can store and backup your information. Not only is the information backed up, but you can you access files from any computer or Smartphone. When you sign up for the (free) service, you place a folder on any device you use regularly. When a file is saved to the local folder, a copy is stored online, and the folders on your other devices are updated as well. You can also access the folder on any random computer by going to their website and signing in with your password.

When I was writing the first draft of Share the Road, I backed it up after each session. And either through paranoia, or to create a road map of how far I got each day, I sent a separate file each day leaving all the previous ones intact. There are 30 versions of the first draft, one for each day I wrote. I did the same thing for each of the edits, so there are more than a hundred files, each with a slightly different version of the book.

I doubt I will ever go back and pour over each version to see what each contains, but it is sort of interesting to look back on the file dates to see how long I took on each round of editing. I probably won't even open more than a few of the files at any time, but it is nice to know they are there, backed up on another server in case my computer fails.

And of course, most everything is backed up on another external drive in case the cloud fails me. You can never be too careful.

Painting a better picture

I enjoyed the first read-through. I found good bits and pieces that I had forgotten about. I could see the occasional a-ha moments that happened as I wrote my way into the story. I saw again how random things I put down early in the story popped up again later. And after reading it through, I finally had a title I liked. It was really rough, but it only made me want to make it better.

And it needed a lot of work. There was rambling, repetition, and lots of typos. Though it is not a story where lots of things are happening (think Cast Away), it was in desperate need of fleshing out. I had pictured the scenes in my minds eye, but I had not brought that clarity to the page.

During the first round of editing, I primarily focused on bumping up the descriptive parts, painting a better picture of the world my character was passing through. Since this was not a plot driven book, I needed to be able to pull the reader into the world if it would have any chance of getting them to keep turning pages. I would work on polishing the story on the second pass-through.

This approach to editing is the reverse of most recommended methods. Why bother fleshing out the scenes in a story if you aren't even sure if they are going to remain in the book. But for some reason this is what appealed to me. I needed to be pulled into the world as well, to find reasons to be there, to find details I previously missed.

And I found that I enjoyed editing.

I was surprised by a couple of things. Editing was as slow or slower than putting down the first draft. As hard as I struggled getting the story down on the page, I couldn't imagine going any slower. But in a way editing was more difficult. I wasn't pouring over every word, but the focus was definitely finer. Just as I was trying to notice more details in the imagined scenery, individual words and sentences clamored for attention.

But I found that I enjoyed the tweaking. It still felt like I was discovery writing even though I knew the story already. By taking a closer look at the scenery passing by, I found more inspiration, and so did the main character. The story still wasn't worth showing to anyone else just yet, but it felt like I was headed in the right direction.

First read

My first novel, written in a rush in just over a month. There was pride, there was elation, there was computer screen eye fatigue...now I had to read the thing.

As I mentioned previously, during the month of November I did not go back and read what I had written. One of the many lessons from On Writing was to shelter away your first draft and show no one the work in progress. It is just too rough, and you are already filled with enough self-doubt that you don't need anyone else reinforcing that feeling. You just need to lock yourself away until it is all done.

I included myself in that recommendation. I did not read back any further than a few paragraphs to pick up where I left off. I had to keep my head down and keep writing, and it was no time to edit or obsess. But now it was done. The time for revision was here.

I had intended to wait a month before reading it for the first time, but I was home for Christmas and had time at my disposal. And of course I was just excited to see what I had written. I held out until December 22nd.

I went to a copy store and printed it out on 8.5 x 11 paper. I bought a new binder and a couple of highlighter pens. I went to a Starbucks, bought a strong cup of coffee, and braced myself for what I would find. Of course I was excited to read it for the first time, but I knew I would find things that made me cringe.

I started reading it and marking up the page. I spent a long time of the first chapter, trying to tweak and rewrite sentences to paint a better picture. I don't remember how far I got before realizing that it wasn't working. I was getting too bogged down, obsessing over phrases and punctuation. I wasn't reading the story.

I ended up setting the notebook aside. I found a program online that would convert my Word file to a mobile format, and downloaded the book to my Kindle. There are ways to make notes on the Kindle, but it is more cumbersome than with pen and paper. Reading it as an ebook made it easier to just read. Of course I was making mental notes along the way, but the first time through, I just read.

Turning point

I was over two thirds of the way through the month, but not as far along on the word count. I had been doing a pretty good job at clawing my way back toward that purple line over the past five days, but as my text on the 22nd implied, I was hitting another stall point where doubt and terrible writing were creeping in.

I wrote nothing on the 24th, and very little on the 25th. I was bumping up against the turning point in the novel. Unfortunately, I didn't exactly know what that turning point was going to be. I was stalling, not sure where to go. Five days until the deadline, 16,500 words to go.

The character in my book was riding his bike down the west coast. He was physically moving down the road as the story unfolded, and he had reached a nice stopping point. Something needed to happen. I was running out of time and real estate. So I plunged ahead.

Over the next few days, I wrote furiously. The combination of the approaching deadline and my own discovery about where the story was leading spurred me on. The story started to move, and the words came more easily. It certainly did not "write itself" as I have heard some people describe it, but in a way I was more detached and excited to see how it would turn out.

Over the final five days, I wrote those 16,500 words, plus a few more. At noon on November 30th, 2010, I had 50,213 words toward my first novel. I had made it. Through all the stalling and all the days where I didn't write, I had crossed the finish line with twelve hours to spare.

The good news/bad news? I'm wasn't done. When I was stalled at 33,000 words, I didn't think I had enough left to say to make it to the 50,000 word mark. But the turning point ended up being longer than expected, so I have a few more chapters to go until I reach "The End".

I took a much needed break for a day or two, but was back at it after a couple of days. On December 12th, I had 9,000 more words and the first draft of my first novel.

My first novel. Hard to believe.

But the work and fun were just beginning.

Outrunning and sheltering self-doubt

I want to vomit on my keyboard. Who is writing this crap? Oh wait, its me.

I sent this text to my writing buddy on day 22 of the 30 day challenge. He said that if he had ripped out the backspace key, he would have been finished long ago. I suggested that we turn down the screen brightness all the way so we didn't have to read what we were writing.

Lack of confidence and that niggling feeling of self-doubt. The feeling that what you are creating is not only poor, but worthless and laughable. I am sure that even successful writers feel this insecurity at times, and there may be no way around it. It is something you just have to plow through. If it turns out you were right, and the thing you were creating was indeed crap, well, you'll find that out soon enough. No need to torture yourself in the meantime.

I'd like to say that I kept this in mind at all times, but of course I didn't. Several times a day, that lingering feeling would creep in and stall my progress. But like that one good golf shot that gives you hope after a terrible round, there would be that one idea or turn of phrase that sustained me through all self-critiquing. But it was always a bit of a struggle. I sent up the text message flare because I knew my buddy would understand my frustration.

Another bit from On Writing by Stephen King on the way he pushes through:

With the door shut, downloading what's in my head directly to the page, I write as fast as I can and still remain comfortable. Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. If I write rapidly, putting down my story exactly as it comes into my mind, only looking back to check the names of my characters and the relevant parts of their back stories, I find that I can keep up with my original enthusiasm and at the same time outrun the self-doubt that's always waiting to settle in. 

The time pressure of the looming 50,000 word deadline helped to push me along when I wanted to pause over the next sentence. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, I did not go back and read any of what I had written at the end of the day. I tried to keep pressing forward and didn't want my critical eye going over any of the crap from the last day or three weeks. I think this helped, but the better lesson came in the very next paragraph of King's book:

The first draft - the All-Story Draft - should be written with no help (or interference) from anyone else. There may come a point when you want to show what you're doing to a close friend (very often the close friend you think of first is the one that shares your bed), either because you're proud of what you're doing or because you're doubtful about it. My best advice is to resist that impulse. Keep the pressure on; don't lower it by exposing what you've written to the doubt, the praise or even the well-meaning questions of someone from the Outside World. Let your hope of success (and your fear of failure) carry you on, as difficult as that can be.

I did not show anyone the first draft of my novel while I was working on it. I probably didn't need the above lesson to keep it locked away, but it helped reinforce the decision. At the very least, I figured I should be the first reader. Since I hadn't been reading it as I went along, there was a certain amount of excitement to go back and see what I had created. But paired with that was the always present self-doubt, and I think showing an incredibly rough draft to the world would only amplify the feeling. Especially a work in progress. I agreed that the head down, shut out the world approach was the best for me.

Even with these barriers to self doubt, it still creeped in as indicated by the text to my buddy. But by the end of day 22, there were 32,117 words down and I was approaching the turning point in the book. Whether or not the Outside World would ever see it, the creation continued.