I’ve finished chapter 10 of my novel’s second draft. Until this past weekend, progress on chapter 11 had been going pretty slowly. I feel guilty because part of me feels like I shouldn’t be having a hard time, considering this chapter has an interesting development in it. Even so, rewriting this (or any major sequence) for the second draft feels like I need to execute it as close to perfectly as I can. I know academically that this is folly, but I feel like the only alternative to a near-perfect scene is one where I just phone it in. I’m sure there’s plenty of middle ground in between those two, but one of my broken brain’s many flaws is that it likes to focus on the worst outcomes.
In spite of those struggles, the second draft has just passed the 50,000-word threshold. I could technically end the book very abruptly right where it is (in deeply unsatisfying fashion) and it would still technically count as a novel. I wouldn’t do that, obviously, but 50k is still an important milestone. (Besides, I still have over 14 chapters to go.)
Speaking of 50,000 words, I’m tossing around the idea of doing Novel November this year. I tried doing it once a few years ago to a resounding lack of success. To wit, I fell behind the pace very early on and then my father-in-law passed away, which understandably took up a lot of my focus.
The idea was surfaced by someone in my local writer’s group. I think if enough of us commit to it and we keep each other in check on a regular basis, I could do a lot better this time around. I’m also about to take a short writing course at the local community college on writing a character-driven novel, so I’m eager to pick up some tricks and see how I can put them to use not just in my current project, but in some other ones I’ve got simmering on the side.
Being among other writers, or reading about other writers’ processes, they sometimes discuss the timelines for projects they’ve done and it feels (to me) that a lot of them are able to work at a much faster pace than I can. Compared to my crawling pace, it’s as if these other authors are cranking out novels in their sleep.
This requires me to be cognizant of the fact that my pace and my workflow can’t be someone else’s. That will never work. I can only work at the pace I’m able to. It’s constrained by other obligations and my own mental health. Could I be better at operating within those constraints? Sure. But what I can’t afford to do is compare myself to other writers who produce output faster than me and think it’s some reflection on my worth as a writer.
In fact, “the output” should be among the least of my concerns right now. I’ve yet to be published for anything and unless I were to ever get to a point where I’m doing this for a living (which I don’t expect), the process is more important from the point of artistic value and self-fulfillment.
In all honesty, if I only ever get one book published, that would be enough. My dream is to be able to go into a bookstore and see my book on the shelf. I know most publishers are more concerned about how to turn one book into several (for the sake of ongoing revenues), but until I come up with a banger idea for a trilogy, my focus will be on getting one (1) book physically published.
And so, I press on. My hope for anyone reading this is that you’ll be able to do the same in whatever endeavor brings meaning to you. We’ve all been taught a lot of lessons that our worth is measured by the monetary value our effort produces, but those are false ideas. Make art for art’s sake. Write for writing’s sake. Be human. Enjoy nature. Screw capitalism! And, of course, be kind to one another.
-Marc
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