Get On With It

The trick to writing a novel is, as I have discovered, and as Monty Python illustrates, just to:




This possibly seems basic, and I had a better post on the subject planned before I had some limoncello with lunch (hmm, syrupy lemony goodness; hmm, destruction of brain cells) but basically - to write a book you need to write the book.  The first draft will be crappy and bad, there will be plot lines that vanish and characters that act inconsistently, the structure will be woolly/nonexistent, but you need to get on with it until there is some sort of story in place.  The language might be repetitive, you might (MIGHT) have characters repeatedly feeling things in their stomachs or you might over use the word 'just' because it is just so easy to do so, but it needs to get written.  That is what the first draft is for.


You need to work at it rather than watch TV, or read fanfic, or waste hours on TV Tropes*, or all the other things that the mindsuck of the internet provides for your pleasure, sitting there open while you look at the writing document whose word count does not appear to be growing, which obviously has nothing to do with you.  You need to be prepared for the first draft to suck like nothing has ever sucked before, because buried amidst all of that craptastic prose is something that can be fixed and turned into the novel you have in your head.  The perfect novel that you had in mind when you first faced the blank page and started writing.

This mindset is what has bumped my word count from 7K to 21K since Monday, even though most of those words are wrong, even though I'm going to have to go back and redo this whole thing repeatedly, and even though I have no idea where the middle of the novel is going.  Even though it sucks and I'm not 100% sure I'm going to be able to fashion it into anything remotely readable.  Because I will have written something - and, at the end of the day, that is what matters.

And to prove that my MA supervisor was right and I can't be serious without undercutting it somehow:



* This happened on Friday.  I lost hours.  But I do now have spoilers for Criminal Minds s5 which = yay, as I was not happy with my DVDs for ending where they did with s4.  Want s5 on DVD or for Living to reshow it right naow, if only for Hotch doing what I now know he does while passing the Despair Event Horizon.


And the formatting on this entry is screwed, even though I've tried to fix it.  Blast.

Book addiction

Goodreads is far too addictive, could easily waste hours on there adding books (like all my Terry Pratchetts, which I've just done) or playing the trivia game (which shows that I've gleaned a good working knowledge of books I've never read - how to blag your way through an English degree).

But then I get wondering about some books which I'm not adding, or books which I should add as some sort of "well, I *own* it even if I haven't *read* it" - on this list stick almost everything that's won the Booker in the last fifteen years, a ton of literary stuff I picked up in 3 for 2s or second hand shops (why yes I will try some Ishiguro if it's £1.50). Also other books which I should have read, either because they're classics or because they formed part of the curriculum at schools I didn't go to, or because all my friends have read them. And then I stare at my bookshelves and wonder how much stuff lurks behind the double stacking which I'd love to read but which I don't get to.

This is rambling. And yet another way to avoid getting on with The Novel of Doom (as it has now been renamed; may leave it like that, it's catchy). Have to restart whole thing from beginning, change plot, add new character, kill off a character mid-book rather than pre-book and generally look towards NaNo as a time to work on a shiny new thing. But then by about November 15th I'll be wanting another shiny new thing to work on because I'm getting annoyed with NaNo Project. Ah, fickleness.

Was going to avoid posting a video, but (slight swearing):

A Gentleman Does Not Conga

Can think of nothing overly witty to say as a (new) first post, so shall allow Mitchell & Webb to provide entertainment for me:

(One use of the f-word, but if you know Pride and Prejudice you know it's justified).