Wednesday, November 30, 2011

A moment to brag

I've been quiet all month, mainly due to lack of internet, but I wanted to take a moment to brag.



I’ve done this before, but never had anything serious come of it. It was mainly a “get used to writing fiction and/or every day” thing. This year due to work I basically only wrote in large spurts once a week. (Another reason I wasn’t constantly posting wordcounts and angst about writing.) But I managed something surprisingly coherent.

It is not anything worth reading at the moment, and is loaded with typos and ridiculous ideas.

Nor is it a well-crafted plot with in-depth characters. That wordcount? I actually ended before the 50K and added another subplot with a minor character to drag out the ending.

But I am proud of myself. I did a "realistic" fiction story (it is still an adventure/detective genre book, though) the whole way through. I don't have five bazillion pointless subplots. Even the one I added at the end could easily be retrofitted to go with the rest of the plot (and it has a ready made pivotal point for my main character that didn't suit her at the end but would definitely make sense earlier.) I did not have aliens land at any point. The premise is totally absurd, and I took some leeway with probability, genetics and demolitions but that's all within the genre. The plotlines actually fit with each other. And I avoided padding. There are some nice in-depth descriptive scenes, and a few points where it gets redundant but really I just wrote plot the whole way through. If I did rewrite and edit it, it would actually get a lot longer.

All-in-all I put out something I could clean up and still shop around as a novel this time. It's not as funny as the last one, but it's there.

I am now officially an "Unedited novel the desk drawer" writer. Go me.

6 comments:

  1. Yay you! Feel proud and enjoy yourself. That's a lot of tough work.

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  2. Congratulations. I am in awe of everyone who manages to complete this challenge.

    One year I will definitely try it. I almost did this time around, but there are too many things going wrong with my life right now to get involved in something like this. Hopefully next year.

    Yay!

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  3. Congratulations. Writing is hard. Damn hard.

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  4. Thumbs up and 100% "grand for you" too.

    I've never forgotten Philip K Dick discussing how kind Robert Heinlein was to him, despite their political differences, and of how the older man's advise to writers ran: finish things.

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