Writing is like any other creative endeavour - you start something, then make mistakes, then throw it away and start again.

The first story I worked on for NaNoWriMo has turned out a bit like that. It started out many years ago as something I thought of in a dream. I wrote part of the story, the first two chapters in fact, but never got beyond those first two chapters because I kept on going back and revising them instead of writing the story down. That was why I found NaNo so important - it made me write the story.

Anyway, after I had finished the novel I printed it out and stuck it in a drawer for six weeks (as per Stephen King's advice in "On Writing"). Then I started to revise it.

I made two huge mistakes in starting my revision of the story.

Firstly, I decided that first person was too restrictive. First person narrative surely is restrictive, and in fact the big problem with this book was that my characters kept on having meetings. However, the first person and the voice that I got from that were also critical to the energy of the narrative, so giving up on it was silly.

Secondly, I started layering themes onto the narrative. Basically, this was always an adventure story and I started to underplay the venturesome aspects in order to jam in more and more thematic elements: the whole process of a rewrite ground to a halt, and I haven't touched that story for four years now.

This is also where the fear of throwing things away comes in - I dared not start again on the text for fear that I would lose the voice. Instead I hammered in more and more chapters with diverting but spurious character background.

Lesson learned, I hope, but that's five minutes.

Posted by Dunx at February 24, 2009 06:20 AM