Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Surprise, Surprise

I couldn’t leave chapter two in third person.  More accurately, I couldn’t leave character 2 in third person.  Now I’m going to have two voices in first person.  One fifteen, one forty.  One female, one male. Does it work?  Who knows.  I don’t want to give it to first reader because at this stage it would be a mistake.

I still only have four chapters.  And I’m not finished changing character 2 from first to third. As I do this I can’t help thinking why?  Why am I doing this at all?  As I’ve said before I’m a writer so it appears I have to write.

I shouldn’t read Laura Lippman’s Memory Project, but I like to check out what she’s up to.  Still, I’m exhausted from reading her schedule and her word count.  Even though she’s younger than I am, I didn’t keep up such a pace when I was her age.  I don’t know how she does it.  She even writes on tour!  I never did.  I was delighted to have a real excuse not to write.

I can’t help thinking I’m spinning my wheels, making busy work.  Well, not all the time.  Sometimes I feel that what I’m writing is good and no matter what, if I keep going this way, I’ll be proud of it when I finish.  Sometimes I think what I’m writing sucks and I’ll be embarrassed when I finish.

When I finish?  Only yesterday I didn’t want to come to this computer.  But I did.  I still get the Sunday night blues.  I try to remind myself that I’m not going to school the next day and that no one is making me write but me.  Even so I have those damn blues.  Do others have them?

I think it’ll take me the rest of the week to change character 2 from third to first.  I started chapter five before I realized I had to make these changes.  Only a paragraph.  I hope the changes will propel me and I can get back to surprising myself by what the people do in this book.

10 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Isn't that the best thing--being surprised. I can never get over it.

Katie said...

I think that's ridiculous to gauge one's writing progress based on word count. I can write a lot of really sucky words in a short period of time, but if it's not going, it's not going. I believe in writing SOMEthing every day, but I base my success on how much of it I think I'll have to deep-six in the end. Didn't Truman Capote say of the reported three weeks taken to write "On the Road" - "That's not writing; that's typing"?

Sandra Scoppettone said...

Katie, everyone works in a different way. Laura, who is a very successful writer likes to write a certain amount of words a day on her first draft. I like to write 5 pages a day if I can. Some writers spew it out and then go back to at the end to do their rewrite, which for me is the most important part of writing. Some feel the way you do. We're all different and nothing that works for someone is ridiculous. Yes, it was Capote.

Anonymous said...

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Katie said...

Okay, touche : ) You sound like my mom (who is the greatest person on the face of the planet : ). She is always telling me to stop seeing things in such black-and-white. Maybe I'm just jealous that I can't just spew it out, can't shut off the internal editor all the way : ) Oh well. As long as you plant a tree once in awhile to make up for the pages : )))

Barbara Martin said...

Surprise when writing can be the best thing about it. Sometimes the characters turn out to have their own say about how things ought to be.

Don't even concern yourself with word count until you're on the revision end. I don't, but then I'm still in my newbie stage despite having one story published.

Sandra Scoppettone said...

Barbara - you're the 2nd person to pick up on the word count reference. That was a throw away and pertained to Laura Lippman. I don't worry about the word count. In my last contract it was stipulated that I had to hand in a manuscript that had 95,000 words. I got them down to 85,000 and then I had to count. But as you say, not until the final version. It was very annoying.