Wednesday, July 20, 2011

One Chapter a Day for As Long as It Takes

I have been struggling to edit my novel for a couple of months.  Yesterday, I forced myself to shut down everything on my computer except Word to minimize distractions.  Two kids were asleep and one was at preschool.  All I had to do is write.  I told myself I could get up from my chair only to get another cup of coffee or when one chapter was completed. 

On Monday, I planned out exactly the changes I needed to make to existing chapters and the ones I needed to add.  It was a little overwhelming.  Overwhelming to the point I wondered whether I should walk away from it and give it more space.

Yesterday I worked up some determination and wrote one chapter.  Once I got started, it seemed to write itself.  My character's marriage is starting to fall apart a little, something I hinted at in the original version but only included in the first few chapters.  This new chapter only has the main character and her husband in it.   I can see now that it really needed to be added.  The chapter took some turns I didn't expect, that I didn't plan out in my mind before I wrote it. 

Within minutes I was lost in it.  Any worries I had about finishing this story or the amount of work it will take to do revisions was vanished within two sentences - completely gone without a trace.

I think sometimes as writers we think there's magic to writing.  It's easy to think that if I'm having a bad day, my story might turn out bad so I should wait until tomorrow.  But I truly think that if I had sat down to write that chapter any day of the week, it would have gone pretty much the same way because I know who my characters are.  They couldn't have behaved differently in the chapter - not a chance.

So I think it won't be so difficult to write another chapter today.  And another tomorrow.  And rip apart and reassemble another one on Friday.  I make a commitment to myself to work on it one chapter a day for as long as it takes.

I love this story before I made these changes.  I can't wait to see how it turns out when I'm done. 

3 comments:

  1. Editing can be hard, but what I like about it is you come back and fill in any holes you missed.

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  2. Congrats! It's awesome that you were determined to do it and you DID. It's going to be totally worth it in the end. (I have a feeling I'm going to need to do this very soon, too.)

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