Sunday, November 6, 2011

Please Don't Make Me Write an Outline


I am thisclose to finishing the first edit of the first 25% of my first draft!  I am very excited.  The editing process has lead me to fix the really terrible parts and discover ways to add some moments that I find really interesting.  I hope you will enjoy them too.  I kinda’ like my own writing sometimes.  I suppose I should like it all the time, but I have one major difficulty with writing.  The minute I have planned the whole story out I immediately get bored and quit.  Yep, once I know what is going to happen I just can’t keep going.  You see, I already know the ending and how I got there, so why do I have to write it down? 

As a book nerd, it amazes me how tightly wound literature can be.  The best books I have read are so well constructed it is impossible that the respective authors must have planned down to the small details.  The best example of such organized construction is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  The economy of words is impressive, and the reverberations of patterns, words, and ideas winds the story to a pitch that can only end in catastrophe (in the plot, not in the writing).  Dear god do I wish someone would make that movie. 

I do not have the same abilities.  I tried, I had this great little novel about a lost heiress, and maybe I will return to it someday, when I have forgotten my intentions.  Until then I have to figure out ways to keep my own self guessing.