90k and still kicking

Well, I just hit my goal of 90,000 words for this book. At work, on my lunch break. After giving myself a silent cheer so as not to draw the eyes of more composed individuals in the office, I return to the writing. Because, although the goal I set for myself has been reached, this book is far from over.

In fact, I've just realized that, come revision time, probably a good chunk of what I've written is going to go out the window. Because it just doesn't work with the turn the book took in, oh, just the last thousand words.

Now, mind you, this is not some major plot twist. I haven't changed whodunit or why. I haven't changed the ending. I haven't changed the story in and of itself. But the route to get to the ending has just taken a very large--and hopefully rather interesting--detour. I'm going to say I've probably still got at least 20,000 words to go.

Which, again, means that I won't feel so horrible cutting entire scenes, entire chapters, when I sit down with my red pen. Because, let's face it, for most of us, taking out large chunks of our hard-won words is really quite painful. I'm still not going to like it but knowing that there's a lot of the story left may be able to soothe me.

Maybe.

It's funny. I know I've blogged about this before. But anyway. We talk about characters running away with us, doing their own thing. In my case, and not for the first time, the story has done that. I was writing one simple scene, one key scene that's intended to be the sort of turning point, the point at which the protagonist finally turns down the road toward finding the truth. And then it just popped into my head that this was the perfect opportunity for . . . well, I'm not going to elaborate. But it was just the perfect opportunity and I couldn't resist but it's making me really take it in a different direction from this point forward.

I also strongly suspect that my protagonist has just shifted from one character to another. But that's a change that's been a long time coming, I think, so I'm not too bothered. I'm just a bit worried about how to make that mesh with the beginning of the book, where the guy who just became the protag can't be included. Unless... hmm. Perhaps. Yes, that might work nicely. Massive changes though.

But that's what revision's all about, isn't it?

The first steps of revision

So, revision is going well so far. Dining room table is rather covered with notebook, pens, clean manuscript pages, scribbled manuscript pages. Yet, for the moment, despite scatter, not chaotic. And I have a lid from a paper box on the table which cat uses as a bed. It pleases her to be able to watch me and it keeps her from laying on my papers and getting in the way. Spent the evening last night listening to Queen and U2 and revising. Queen is truly lovely dance-around-the-house-alone music. Cat thought I was crazy, I think, but it was fun.

I'd already been through most of the pages I revised last night, but I found so much more wrong with them on the second pass. I did the first pass on the living room floor in front of the television so I probably wasn't paying that much attention.

I'm working at the very beginning of my book so at the moment it's more stylistic changes, noticing poor word choice or bad use of punctuation. I haven't created plot problems yet, really, but as I read through the beginning I'm (1) noticing the things that I'd planned to do more with and which I know I forgot about later in the book and (2) coming up with ideas to elaborate later--and for future books if this takes off as a series.

All in all I'm currently pleased with how revision is going, although that is subject to change without notice.

Also, I have a new livejournal for posting more personal ramblings. See here.

Revision Time

Well, I'm about to start revising my first book, the first Taggert Twins mystery. Anyone who'd like to read the draft and give me feedback, please leave a comment.

To tell you the truth, I'm really sort of scared to start. I'm going to use Holly Lisle's guide to revising a novel as sort of my guidebook, but with a few changes. You wouldn't know it to look at my apartment but I'm really big on organization -- at least when it comes to my writing. For the book I'm about to revise, I have four documents. And that's low. For the book I'm working on now I have, I believe, at least 9. I have things for the synopsis/outline, characters, plotting notes, the actual text, tracking my progress, tracking my scenes and chapters, etc. And I know that as I go through revision, I'm going to want separate lists for notes about plot lines, notes about my characters, notes about ... I don't know what but you get the picture. A single-subject notebook like she mentions in the linked page will just not do for me.

I'm completely anal about some things. What can I say? *shrug*

I'm also scared because, in the writing of the draft, I had a couple of characters and a whole plot line that, because I didn't know what to do with them in the end, I let completely drop off. The characters disappear and the plot line stops at a big ol' brick wall. Goes nowhere. So I know I have to either figure out where to go with that plot line or take it all out -- which is going to leave a massive hole smack in the middle of my story. (Sort of like Holly's dancing bears and clowns or whatever -- if you haven't read her article on Middles, I suggest you do. It's quite amusing.) And I'm no closer to figuring it out now than I was before.

I'm also worried I won't be able to keep up the current pace I have on my current book once I start revising the original.

But it's time for a trip to Wal-Mart so I can get my pretty notebook and my pretty colored pens. And sooner or later I need to get a filing cabinet or file box or something for the fifty bazillion notebooks I have floating around my apartment. They have fic from at least seven different fandoms and are in varying states of disarray. They need to go hide somewhere before they drive me insane. Hmm. Maybe something else to buy at Wal-mart.

On another topic, I totally didn't realize how thick 208 pages can be. And, dummy that I am, I didn't realize until I'd already printed 60 pages that I hadn't put in page numbers. Pray to god that I don't drop the damn thing or hold it too close to a fan. (Yikes)