I stumbled onto this video a while back. With the launch of the iPad imminent, I thought it was as good a time as any to drag it out, dust it off, and slap it up here as “content.” I’ve made my unabashed love for all things Apple well known to readers of this site (as well as to anyone who has ever met me, I think), so it’s no shock that I really enjoyed this thing. But what really
Have you ever liked a film ironically, only to look up a little while later and suddenly find that you have genuinely fallen in love with it? Of course you have. But what separates me from you normal people is that I do it with alarming regularity. I can’t even begin to count the number of terrible films that I honestly love with all of my heart. I can’t explain why or how I have fallen under the spell of these cinematic atrocities, but there’s no denying that they’ve got me for life.
Wait! Let me explain!
By babies, of course, I mean fictional character that I have created and invested in emotionally. And by killing, I mean… well, killing. Yes, I’ve reached the point in my narrative where I have begun to off my main characters. Not all of them, of course. There’s still enough story to tell to justify keeping some of them around (for now… muahaha…). But I have begun to gradually eliminate certain characters in order to advance the plot and the emotional arcs of more important characters.
I reached a personal milestone today – 200 pages. That’s right, I am now officially 200 pages into The Novel. (Is it appropriate to call it a novel? I feel like that implies some sort of class and prestige, and not at all the general pulp spectacle that I have been crafting, but I digress.) Even better, the finish line is in sight. I’ve got the major plot line to resolve, obviously, with all of the little character bits that are tied into it, and I’ve also got one major dangling plot thread that I need to address and figure out how to weave back into the whole of the narrative. It’s one of those bits that may be cut the second time around. The characters at the center of it were at one point in the planning stages relatively important to the plot, but as it developed, their stories and mine diverged from one another. But! As I said, personal milestone achieved. Now I just need to make that final push, and then, with a first draft in hand, I’ll actually be able to get a little rest. Huzzah!
I’ve reached that stage in the creative process where, on the verge of finishing draft one of the novel, I find myself struggling to force out the final sixty or so pages. I think the problem is twofold: first, I’ve already unintentionally turned my mind toward the first revision. It’s impossible not to think about the changes that I’m going to make when I go through the story again. That makes it significantly more difficult to focus on the draft at hand, especially when I find myself coming up with new ideas that, while appropriate for the late stages of the book given the way certain characters have developed, contradict already-established events that I’ll have to change the second time around. It’s frustrating to not be able to guide the story the way I’d like it to this time around, but that’s what I get for the way I write. I don’t like to lay out the whole story before I write it, because then I’m stuck trying to conform to an outline, and by extension, shutting out potential sources of inspiration and avenues of creativity. On the whole, I prefer my approach, but it is not without its consequences.
Second, independent of any next steps in the process, I’m just ready for this draft to be done. It’s a tremendous intellectual strain to force myself to write every day after work. Some days I hit my word goal, some days I don’t, but I am at least getting a couple of pages done every day, and I’m finally reaching the point of exhaustion. I need to finish this draft just so I have a draft finished, at which point I’ll be able to step away from the process for a couple of weeks before starting again. I’m honestly just ready to be done with the thing for a bit, but in order to do that, I have to finish it, as exhausting as that may be.
But I’m slowly but surely making my way to the finish line, and I hope to have a draft completed by the end of the month. Here’s hoping!