Truly a strange thing to look back at your old writing. I don’t have any of my writing from the 80’s, nor do I have any of my attempts at first writing a novel as a boy.
Probably a good thing.
It’s been six years since I started on my first novel. I wrote couple of scenes, and took the plunge. I was most definitely a pant’ser at the time, just writing. AS I continued through the novel, my work flow began morphing into a planner, to make sure I could finish.
To my surprise, I finished the book in 45 days.
It had 180,000 words.
No problem, I thought. After all, I grew up reading Tolkien, Dune, and Richard Adams’ immense books such as Shardik. My book shelves as a boy were sagging – literally – under the weight of so many books I couldn’t fit them all on the book shelf.
Now, here’s where things went right. I got involved with a movie producer, and I had to get a crash course in writing movies. Suddenly I was learning a LOT about story structure I didn’t know before. I also at the same time sent a copy of my first novel to someone for feedback, and the response was brutal – “You need writing lessons.”
Um.
So I got mad. I dug deeply into reading a lot of Writer’s Digest books, bought writing seminars left and right. I used evernote to clip endless articles and lists – some of which I actually read!
And something funny happened. I kept writing. I put aside my original seven part series and wrote some other works. And I wrote my Star Trek novel, a story idea I had back in the seventies. And when I was done, I was dumbfounded. It was the best novel I’d written so far. Then I did NaNoWriMo, and wrote the gunslinger novel. It too was really good. I felt like I’d caught the essential flavor of the Sergio Leone western.
Now I’m looking at my first series all over again, and I can see where the problems are. I started the first book too early, and I kept trying to write new intro scenes.
Finally, I realized where in the book the inciting incident was – right in the middle. Out of desperation, I cut it in half.
Perfect.
I should have the entire series finished soon. I’m just trying to get all these books edited and re-written.
