Hey guys! Late-but-great is my philosophy today. I'm living up to the first part pretty consistently. Not sure about the second. I guess we'll see.
So my current WIP is pretty cool, if I say so myself. Which I do. And I am SO EAGER to be done with it. But I have a little problem.
It's short.
Yeah. I've talked about this problem before, which is the opposite of most writers I know: instead of having trouble with writing too much, I have trouble with writing too LITTLE.
And I hate that. HATE. I am burning with fiery, fierce, ferocious hate about how I cannot tell a story the first time around in more than 60k words. Usually, during revisions I easily pick up the other ~20k before I feel comfortable calling it a draft, but I'm on Revision Numero Tres right now and still sitting less-than-pretty at about 57k. I just can't find the right places to make the words go.
So yeah. I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE writing. Obviously. Or I wouldn't do it. But no love is perfect, and this is what irks me about mine.
I can't be alone. Vent me with, Alliteratus-- what irritates you about your own writing?
6 comments:
Omigosh, I'll go first. How long of a comment can I leave?
Okay, I'd say the most annoying part to me is how SLOW I write. I think about things very long and very hard before putting anything down. You think this would perhaps do away with any sort of revision but laugh laugh laugh...no.
I wish I could be one of those people that can churn out a first draft in 3 weeks, but alas. Such is not to be. Ah well, at least the stories that do come out are mine and mine alone. :)
Ditto what Marie said. I...is...slow...
Megan Abbott averages 180 to 200 pages per book, so that's about 50,000 words, and she not only gets away with it, but people queue up to buy her books. Of course, she's also shorter than you. Maybe it's a height thing.
Padding's always bad, but maybe this is an opportunity to add more legitimate characters and twists?
I'm with Adam and Marie. My writing is soooooo slow. And I have a hard time keeping my plots focused. I always want to run off on a tangent about EVERYTHING.
Marie, Adam, and Taryn: I think I only write "fast" because I am obsessive about my stories. But there is some quality suffering as a result-- see above, about not having ENOUGH story.
Gary-- that's what I'm trying to do! I also agree that I hate padding, but I am expanding some characters and some aspects of the plot that I don't think are fully fleshed out or could be more complicated, certainly. It's just hard to see exactly WHAT needs fleshing out at this stage, so I will take my time and let it all simmer. Then hand it to a beta or thirty. And so on.
Ditto. I am a SLOW writer. Slower than a snail in a blizzard. Yep.
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