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bedlamsbardI have started rewrites of Dust 34! I have actually had Dust 34 done for over a month -- I finished it before my wrists got really bad in mid-April, and got the beta back at the beginning of May -- but I haven't been able to look at until recently because, and this is really unusual for me, I wrote it knowing that I'd have to do a nearly complete rewrite from the ground up. I wanted words on the page so that I'd know the shape of the chapter, the general outline of characters and events, and so that I'd have something to work with. Usually I write a chapter expecting minimal to extensive rewrites -- the last couple chapters of Dust, 32 and 33, both went through several drafts, because I was changing stuff both on a sentence-by-sentence basis and adding scenes (to make them as creepy as humanly possible). And that was pretty much the most extensive editing process I'd ever gone through for any chapter of Dust (especially since those two were written more or less side by side, with me throwing them at snacky and going, "Now? Now? What now? Should I kill someone else? How can I make this creepier?")
But this chapter I wrote knowing that I wouldn't just have to go into edits, I'd have to rewrite from the ground up. And the big reason for this is because at no point while writing was I actually comfortable with my prose. My prose in this chapter is okay. It's serviceable. It gets the point across (I think). But I don't like most of it, minus a few pieces of dialogue here and there, and while the core of the chapter is remaining the same, I also have to change vast swathes of it. So: barring any exceptions that pop up over the course of rewrites, a complete rewrite from the ground-up.
I do this on my academic papers sometimes, usually for a paragraph here or there or if I'm lucky enough (HAHAHAHAHAHA) to have a complete draft done in time to actually have multiple drafts. I copy and paste a paragraph at a time into a new blank document and write the new paragraph while looking at that one. If it's an academic paper, I usually have multiple Word docs at a time: first draft, references, images, book notes, article notes, primary source notes, second draft (in the rare case where this is applicable), and then at the end I start a new document and slap it all together. If I'm doing this kind of ground-up rewriting, I'll have three writing docs: the original first draft, a otherwise-blank document with whatever paragraph I'm working on in it, and the second draft. (Plus all the others, obviously.) For this chapter of Dust, I'm working off a similar principle, only I'm C&P'ing a page at a time into a new document and rewriting from there.
Since I usually add a few thousand words in edits, this could get substantial, especially since I'm aiming to flesh out the skeleton of this chapter -- which was already pretty sizable at 9K. So I'm pretty curious to see how big this one gets -- if it grows considerably into a 10K+ chapter or if it stays about the same. I'm reasonably sure that I'm not going to end the new draft earlier than the original version, but we'll see. Should be fun!
(This is not another murder island chapter. This chapter could not be more different than the murder island chapters if I tried -- and, okay, I guess I did try, because after about 30K of murder island I needed something really, really different.)
Unfortunately this is probably going to take a while, between the fact it's a complete rewrite and my bum wrists. But I'm really happy to be back writing (even if it hurts, which it does), and aiming for my general per-day wordcount, which I haven't been hitting in the past month because I've mostly been too upset or busy to write. (That's 500 words a day, in case you were wondering. On good days I can get more (into the 1-2K range -- the best I've ever done was back in freshman year of undergrad: 10K. I haven't done that in years), on bad days I get less (I still aim for about 250 on bad days), but 500 is generally doable.)
snacky and going, "Now? Now? What now? Should I kill someone else? How can I make this creepier?")But this chapter I wrote knowing that I wouldn't just have to go into edits, I'd have to rewrite from the ground up. And the big reason for this is because at no point while writing was I actually comfortable with my prose. My prose in this chapter is okay. It's serviceable. It gets the point across (I think). But I don't like most of it, minus a few pieces of dialogue here and there, and while the core of the chapter is remaining the same, I also have to change vast swathes of it. So: barring any exceptions that pop up over the course of rewrites, a complete rewrite from the ground-up.
I do this on my academic papers sometimes, usually for a paragraph here or there or if I'm lucky enough (HAHAHAHAHAHA) to have a complete draft done in time to actually have multiple drafts. I copy and paste a paragraph at a time into a new blank document and write the new paragraph while looking at that one. If it's an academic paper, I usually have multiple Word docs at a time: first draft, references, images, book notes, article notes, primary source notes, second draft (in the rare case where this is applicable), and then at the end I start a new document and slap it all together. If I'm doing this kind of ground-up rewriting, I'll have three writing docs: the original first draft, a otherwise-blank document with whatever paragraph I'm working on in it, and the second draft. (Plus all the others, obviously.) For this chapter of Dust, I'm working off a similar principle, only I'm C&P'ing a page at a time into a new document and rewriting from there.
Since I usually add a few thousand words in edits, this could get substantial, especially since I'm aiming to flesh out the skeleton of this chapter -- which was already pretty sizable at 9K. So I'm pretty curious to see how big this one gets -- if it grows considerably into a 10K+ chapter or if it stays about the same. I'm reasonably sure that I'm not going to end the new draft earlier than the original version, but we'll see. Should be fun!
(This is not another murder island chapter. This chapter could not be more different than the murder island chapters if I tried -- and, okay, I guess I did try, because after about 30K of murder island I needed something really, really different.)
Unfortunately this is probably going to take a while, between the fact it's a complete rewrite and my bum wrists. But I'm really happy to be back writing (even if it hurts, which it does), and aiming for my general per-day wordcount, which I haven't been hitting in the past month because I've mostly been too upset or busy to write. (That's 500 words a day, in case you were wondering. On good days I can get more (into the 1-2K range -- the best I've ever done was back in freshman year of undergrad: 10K. I haven't done that in years), on bad days I get less (I still aim for about 250 on bad days), but 500 is generally doable.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-26 01:56 am (UTC)(*bursts into tears thinking of how much needs to be done to fix NaNo 2012*)