Wednesday, October 03, 2007

But I Don't Whiiiiiiiine

Yesterday I did around a thousand words on The Durand Cousins, and today I did around twelve hundred. Unfortunately, today's twelve hundred words replaces yesterday's one thousand.

I know I shouldn't be revising at this point--I should be pushing through to the end. But one of the things I keep doing with this book is whining. (Sort of like I do here.) And once I get bogged down in the whine, I have trouble with a voice that drives the story. It's almost as if having the correct voice generates material.

That was today's reason for revising. By the way, I wasn't planning to revise when I sat down at the computer. But, as I said, I really was stuck in a whine bog, and you can't just walk out of something like that.

I've nearly revised all the material I decided to revise when I realized some time ago that I was bogged down in whining. Unfortunately, that time I didn't notice the problem until I'd done around forty thousand words.

Here's the sad thing--When I finally finish this first draft, having started over a couple of times and reworked all kinds of material before I get there--I'll still have a crappy first draft. Yet I will be so happy because I won't have a couple of hundred blank pages.

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