Getting Started
Posted on | August 4, 2010 | 2 Comments
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I have a habit, bad or good, I’ve no idea, where, once I’ve written something, I read over it several times, almost obsessively, trying to imagine what some other reader would think of it. I’m not sure why I do this, and I’ve always felt at least a little silly about it, but there it is.
Last night I finished the first draft of the prologue of my novel. It’s not long as prologues go, and from experience the chance that it will end up exactly the way it is in the final product are slim, but after I’d written the last moment, which I had been quite excited to get to, I immediately started reading it from the top. Each time I went through it I tweaked a bit, changing a description, adding detail, correcting a word or a spelling, but the tweaking wasn’t why I reread it.
As I said, I had been very excited to get to that last moment while writing it out and I think I wanted to assure myself that I had led up to it properly, that it was sufficiently startling. Getting to that moment was why I’d actually started writing at all. I’ve been doing a lot of background work for the novel, imagining people and places, deciding on conflicts, living through the cycles and thrusts of the story, both viscerally and philosophically, but the starting off point, the thing that propelled the story into motion had been missing. Last night I realized that I had it, that it had been there for a few days without my knowing it, so I sat down and wrote what lead up to that moment. In the process, my two main characters started breathing a bit more.
As I write, when I write like that, when the story is becoming complete somewhere in my subconscious, I know where it’s headed (of course I do) but on some odd level I experience the writing as if I were reading someone else’s story for the first time and I want to see how it turns out. That’s not completely accurate, but I’m not sure I can describe it exactly. I can say that, when I’ve done good preliminary groundwork building, writing it down is, or at least can be, a thrilling experience. Perhaps one of the reasons I reread a piece so often right after I’ve finished it is to keep that feeling alive longer before it inevitably fades.
In any case, as I reread it, I decided that I liked it. That it is a fine beginning, as far as it goes. That it nicely sets things up, but in a way that isn’t obvious. I don’t think that moment, the one I was so keen to get to, is nearly as startling as I’d thought it would be, but I also now think it needn’t be.
Now I need to complete the groundwork for the next bit, which is rapidly getting to the point in my head where it must also be put down.
(To see all the posts dealing with the novel Old Magic, click here: http://www.tipsonwriting.net/blog/tag/old-magic/ )
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August 4th, 2010 @ 11:00 am
The obsessive reading after writing is something I do also. I’m glad you “confessed” to doing it. I’m new at this writing thing and very insecure. I appreciate all of your facebook info. I usually follow the thread. This is the first time I’ve gone to your blog.
Thank you for sharing and being so open.
August 4th, 2010 @ 11:12 am
Linda – Thanks for your comment. I’m really examining the process of writing, and this has become so much a part of mine that I had to look at it.
Don’t worry about the insecurity. That will go or stay and doesn’t much matter. Keep writing. I’m glad you dropped by here. Come back from time to time and leave a note.