Ideas have never been a problem for me. I have more ideas than I know what to do with. Ideas are the easy part. The first 20 000 words of a manuscript are easy too. The story flows, I'm excited because I'm writing something new, and the hard work hasn't really kicked in yet. About 30 000 words, I start to lag. I have to push through the barrier. I tell myself this is a good story, with interesting characters and a fabulous setting. If I've done my planning properly, I know where the plot is going. If I don't, then the project drifts away, never to be completed. I need to plot. Other writers prefer to fly by the seat of their pants.
40 000 - 50 000 is hard work, but once past that, I get a second wind. I keep track of my word counts each day, watching them grow. I finish my manuscripts at about the 70 000 - 80 000 mark.
Then the editing starts. Now I watch my word counts and delight as they drop. That means I'm tightening the plot, getting rid of fluffy qualifiers and deleting chunks that just aren't needed.
I'm in a happy mood at the moment because my editing is going well. I'm slashing, burning and lifting the quality of my writing. Tomorrow I might be in despair, but it's nice to have a few positive moments scattered amongst the pain!
About Me
- Joanne Sandhu
- Terranora, NSW, Australia
- I write, I do the school run, the soccer run, the tennis run and the tae kwon do run. Sometimes I cook, occasionally I clean. From my deck on the southern end of the Gold Coast, I can see the Pacific Ocean. If I turn around, I see the mountains. I love where I live and share my life with my husband, two boys, two cats, two mice and assorted fish, lizards, frogs and somewhere in the garden is a green tree snake.
1 comment:
Hope your Writing continues to flow and your Editing skills continue to develop. I'm doing Year of the Edit with QWC at the moment
Post a Comment