Page 200 - Word Count 37,931 (wp) 47,000 (pr)
Thursday, April 19, 2007, 10:55 PM
Ah, what a wonderful thing. I sat down this evening to go over the most recent chapter and wound up pumping out about 2000 words. That's what it was like with the last novel, and it's getting to be that way again, with the work taking on a life of its own. I'm really tired tonight (hard couple of days at work) and really didn't intend on writing anything, but it turned out I didn't have any say in the matter.
It was also cool in that I just hit page 200 of the manuscript. In fact, I just finished typing and page 200 only contains one solitary line. It's a line of dialogue. My protagonist says it. He's sitting on the edge of a bathtub in a grimy bathroom with his gun to another man's head.
He says: "When you close your eyes at night, do they scream?"
It was also cool in that I just hit page 200 of the manuscript. In fact, I just finished typing and page 200 only contains one solitary line. It's a line of dialogue. My protagonist says it. He's sitting on the edge of a bathtub in a grimy bathroom with his gun to another man's head.
He says: "When you close your eyes at night, do they scream?"
posted by Stuart Neville at 10:55 PM
3 Comments:
Great line. There really is nothing like drafting.
I have way too many projects going at once to sink my teeth into drafting. :( I'm doing some drafting on my first book, but it's more building a bridge between new plot points and old.
There's something so freeing about plain old drafting: no actual end in sight, just a dirty old compass to guide you.
I can't have more than one thing on the go at once. If I don't stick with something 'til it's done, then it never will be. I have a novel from about four or five years ago that was about ten thousand words from being finished, but I got distracted by moving house. I didn't write another thing until last September. That's why I won't do anything other than my WIP until it's finished.
You have to treat it like a job. (Easier said than done when you've already GOT a job, I know.) But really, later on during your fifth revision, you can't tell the the 200 uninspired words from the 2000 easy, inspired words.
Write every day. That's my motto. Even if it's just revising and poking around old books. Visit your own words every day.
Okay, end of lecture. I'm in that mode from the past two days with my 8 year old.
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