Novel-in-Progress: 46,000 Words

Now that it's November, people might think I'm doing NaNoWriMo, butI'm not. I've been working on this novel since June, and there is noway it's going to get done by the end of November. Ha ha ha ha ha.Ahem. Ha.

But I did turn a corner last Friday. I ended the second third androunded the corner in my head into the last full section of the book.I'm at 46,000 words now and still aiming for 75,000 before I startcutting. The novel is definitely feeling young adult at this point, andI think YA word count is supposed to be between 55,000 and 70,000words. 

About halfway through the second third of the book, I finally saw how it was all going to fit together. There are still certain details that are lost on me, and there's one character I haven't figured out how to fully utilize (does every main character have to be important?) or I should probably cut her out. Right now she's just sort of there but doesn't play a big part in my heroine's life. I think I need to go read some more novels to figure out the answer to that question -- reading always answers most of my questions about writing. How did someone else pull it off?

I sat down with my notebook two weeks ago and laid out the last half of the book. Each chapter got two or three scenes I wanted to work in. What happens between those scenes usually occurs to me when I sit down to write. I try to write at least one chapter -- at least ten pages -- each time I sit down. The chapters may or may not stay at that length -- it's just a way for me to mark progress, like mile markers on an endless highway. Without those mile markers, the trip just seems unbearable.

I get very overwhelmed at the thought of writing something I can't finish in one sitting. Even when I'm tasked with writing long articles, I do the research in several sittings but then when I sit down, I spit out the entire rough draft in one go. This novel thing is different. It's too long, and even if I had the stamina and time to do it in one sitting, I wouldn't know what was going to happen. The plot has occurred to me in the car and in the shower over months. 

Last Thursday night, Beloved and I were talking and I told him I had no idea what I was going to write about in the chapter I had to do the following day. I knew the scenes, but I didn't know what was going to happen in them or how I was going to get from point A to point B. He said, "Just let it come to you," and I knew he was right, but I was panicky. Usually I can sort of see it before I sit down. But then, last Friday I totally got it and wrote 27 pages in one sitting. I think the subconscious will bring a lot to fiction if you plant the seed of the scene and then let it rattle around a little.

Once I wrote out the chapters and scenes for the rest of the book, the writing got a lot easier. Many people believe in outlining an entire novel before they sit down to write, and many people just give it a go. I'm sort of in between, but I am finding having the scenes decided makes it easier to sit down. Then I have the room -- I just have to decide which characters walk into it and what they do while they're there. 

I am anxious to get the rough draft out. That's always the part that worries me the most. If you're going to lose the scent, it's in the rough draft. Rewriting is easier for me than writing. I'm not a person who gets trapped in rewrites, going over and over the same passage. I believe in making each sentence the best it can be, but I don't like working the same project over and over. I read once that Tom Robbins rewrites his novels something like 30 times before they are published. But he doesn't use an outline. He's going at it in a completely different way than I do. I like to make passes, he likes to get it right before he moves on. I have no idea how he can do that -- not know what's going to happen next, but be at that level of detail with each sentence -- but clearly it works for him, and I can only hope to learn how to make this novel-writing process work for me. It has never worked for me before.

While I understand the language of a YA novel should be accessible, I want this novel to be well written. I don't believe in purely plot-driven novels with sloppy sentences (ahem, Twilight). Lemony Snicket wrote some really tight middle-grade novels, and they are clearly accessible to young readers. They even define the hard words right in the text. So I know it can be done. 

The book thing scares me. I had a dream the other night my publisher called me and said every book in the history of the universe written right before and right after mine had sold well, but mine was horrible. And WHY? WHY WAS MINE HORRIBLE? WHY DIDN'T PEOPLE LIKE MINE? I sat there trying to explain but realized I couldn't. 

After much consideration, I think the point of the dream is I'm writing this novel for me. It's a story I want to tell. I really, really want it to get published and be out in the world, but like Beloved always says, I can't focus too much on whether or not it will be popular, because to focus on that is abandon why I write in the first place. Yes, I believe in supporting books with author marketing efforts. Yes, I believe in finding a publisher with a solid distribution model. Yes, I definitely believe in the power of good publicity. Ultimately, though, like bloggers who start blogs to make money, authors who write books only to sell copies will not last very long, for the same reason -- nobody will want to read them.