Around this time last year I decided to buckle down and take The Novel seriously. It had a slow start and took several months to accomplish, but I had a first rough draft of The Novel in about five months. Like most first drafts, it was fairly cringe-worthy. But as Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit."
Thankfully, there were some very redeemable things about The Novel that warranted a second draft. I'm still slogging through the "First Act", trying to iron out some major plot issues and redirect focus from less important people/events. It's a lot of time staring at a computer screen.
Editing is a uniquely painful process because so much heart and soul went into the first draft, but now it must be pulled apart, inspected, tested, reviewed. They say "murder your darlings" and learning to let go of a scene, character or chapter can be rough.
One of the biggest tasks so far is keeping the story in check, keeping it from sprawling out and taking on too many subplots or new faces. The other is balancing information I give to the reader. There should be questions (these questions keep you reading) but they shouldn't be distracting (what is going on? who is this person? why does this matter?).
The most interesting writing session so far was when I realized a character was going to die. It's true, we writers actually sometimes cry when we write character deaths. It wasn't the first one I'd written, but somehow the situation and the circumstances conspired against me. It wasn't easy, but it was right.
As Robert Frost said:
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."
