Friday, August 14, 2009

The Writing Life

My desktop. Sometimes, it's even messier.

It doesn't sound like much, but I've written ten pages this week. Think about it. If I did that every week, I'd have 520 pages at year's end, way more than enough for a book. You have to get into the groove. The important thing is to get something, practically anything, no matter how crappy, down on paper such that you can fix it.

Writing is rewriting. Dunno who said that, but it's true.

I had to do a lot of rewriting, even change the setting for one of the scenes. Surfed the web to become inspired. Looking for a certain kind of campground, and then I found it, and everything finally fell into place. Always aiming for authenticity.

If you have emotion (and you should) in a scene, then you need to dig deep to find the right words to express it. Unhackneyed words, the hardest.

I'm loosing track of the time of the story, and will have to put together a little calendar. That always helps a lot. Need to know if it's midsummer yet, and when would the sun be setting in New York state at that time of year. Even if it's fiction, you still need to get all the details right. Authenticity, remember? Yup.

Now, I'll do one more pass, then onward to Chicago, the boyfriend's nutty ex-wife, the theft of the laptop, and yet another plot point. Keep stringing out the plot like a string of pearls with an emerald stuck in (the surprise) every now and then.

Hard work, is writing. Rewriting not so intense, but also hard, just getting it exactly right. Of course what I think is right not necessarily shared by agents and editors or writing group.

Writing is getting your butt kicked to Madagascar and back.

Off to join Red Sox Nation in Texas, the state of my higher education. I daresay the ball park won't reek of Italian sausage. The smell did go away. Felt like a skunk bathing in ketchup.

So it goes.

Grapeshot

Did I say that writing is rewriting?

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