Days 32 and 33

A weekend to review the work so far, or if you haven’t had a chance to apply some basic questions to an existing project that you started…

I have a few of those.

So I picked a pile of pages out of the unfinished, run-aground, bin, stories I’d started and couldn’t go on after the initial wave of inspiration died off.

Does that mean I should have planned, with an outline, from start to finish, and that wouldn’t happen? No. Either way, plan or no plan, a story can run aground.

And the basic questions…

First – what sections do you like reading?

Well, most of it. When the spark is there, the story writes itself. Just re-reading some of the story reminds me that I am better at this and that I give myself credit. The spirit comes and goes, but when I’m in the grove, it doesn’t take long to write.

Second – what parts don’t you like, and should they be tossed or reworked?

There are no bad parts to be discarded, though sometimes when editing, a whole chapter can change in a rewrite, but the worst of those rewrites is when you write something later on that hasn’t been thought of or had been dealt with differently because the new stuff reflects where the story should go. Then you have to go back.

Third – is this the book you meant to write?

Yes. I find by some remarkable quirk that even if I plan an ending, sometimes it actually gets there, and if I don’t I find it was the ending and the story I was going to tell. It’s just it takes me a few rewrites to get it into shape.

That’s why sometimes I have to walk away from a story for months, sometimes a year, before I come back and the whole story has crystallised in my mind.

In the time I’ve looked at it for this exercise, I realised what was needed and made extensive notes for when I get back to it.