Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

> repeat from asterisk.

(Now why does that mega-snip with malice aforethought make me think of
/Pale Fire/?)

Becoming somewhat frustrated with the round of agents and publishers, I
felt this year that the Transworld/Daily mail competition would be worth
a punt. Alas, the minimum wordage was 80k -- I am somewhat terse.
However, I looked through the files and found that yes, I had a novel
that was only a few thousand short. So I wrote that few thousand,
seamlessly grafting them into the narrative, and sent it off.

Then I read the rules again. There was no fee, no restriction on numbers
of submissions from an individual writer, so I found another novel that
needed expanding and fettling. I wrote a couple of tens of kwords. Sent
it off. The deadline was now about a month away. I found the beginning
of a detective novel which was less than forty k. I added 40k+ in a
couple of weeks. Tarted it up and sent it off. Fortunately the deadline
then intervened.

I was bulging with words: when I lay in bed and thought a sentence my
fingers twitched as I tried to type them, a single thought would blow up
into a tale, a saga, a donaldson. If someone had given me an incentive,
ie money, I could have run them off a novel on almost any subject in a
month.

Trust the fabulator. Just write rubbish, knowing that you can come back
later and delete it all. It's surprising how often you won't need to.

JF
Anyone want a detective novel -- two characters I have come to love, a
built-in publicity campaign and a reason to go out walking on a Sunday
afternoon? I can see two or three sequels that would sprout from the
original. If you're desperate I could probably rattle them off in a
year. Or less.

BTW, the dates, times and numbers are very vague: for a couple of months
I wasn't in. And I've not written a word since.

In article <13mhegc3bhs9b2b@corp.supernews.com>,
Julian Flood <julian@ooopsfloodsclimbers.co.uk> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
>> repeat from asterisk.
>
>(Now why does that mega-snip with malice aforethought make me think of
>/Pale Fire/?)

Since I haven't read it, I couldn't begin to guess.
>
>Becoming somewhat frustrated with the round of agents and publishers, I
>felt this year that the Transworld/Daily mail competition would be worth
>a punt. Alas, the minimum wordage was 80k -- I am somewhat terse.
>However, I looked through the files and found that yes, I had a novel
>that was only a few thousand short. So I wrote that few thousand,
>seamlessly grafting them into the narrative, and sent it off.
>
>Then I read the rules again. There was no fee, no restriction on numbers
>of submissions from an individual writer, so I found another novel that
>needed expanding and fettling. I wrote a couple of tens of kwords. Sent
>it off. The deadline was now about a month away. I found the beginning
>of a detective novel which was less than forty k. I added 40k+ in a
>couple of weeks. Tarted it up and sent it off. Fortunately the deadline
>then intervened.
>
> I was bulging with words: when I lay in bed and thought a sentence my
>fingers twitched as I tried to type them, a single thought would blow up
>into a tale, a saga, a donaldson. If someone had given me an incentive,
>ie money, I could have run them off a novel on almost any subject in a
>month.

This is all very nice. I could do that too, when I was about
twenty-five. I hope you win something; the bits of your work
I've read are both intelligent and moving.
>
>Trust the fabulator. Just write rubbish, knowing that you can come back
>later and delete it all. It's surprising how often you won't need to.

I've tried that too. It comes out as outline notes, not usable
prose. Helluva note, isn't it, when you can't even write
rubbish?

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djheydt@kithrup.com

"Dorothy J Heydt" <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:JtAAAB.G2F@kithrup.com...
>
> I've tried that too. It comes out as outline notes, not usable
> prose. Helluva note, isn't it, when you can't even write
> rubbish?
>
Actually, my first drafts usually turn out to have been worse than outline
notes because I don't realize right away how ghastly they are. Sounds like
you're used to having your first drafts be workable, which mine never are.
Luckily, after the books been whipped into shape, I forget how bad it was
originally.

"Julian Flood" <julian@ooopsfloodsclimbers.co.uk> wrote in message
news:13mhegc3bhs9b2b@corp.supernews.com...
>
> Becoming somewhat frustrated with the round of agents and publishers, I
> felt this year that the Transworld/Daily mail competition would be worth a
> punt. Alas, the minimum wordage was 80k -- I am somewhat terse. However, I
> looked through the files and found that yes, I had a novel that was only a
> few thousand short. So I wrote that few thousand, seamlessly grafting them
> into the narrative, and sent it off.
>
> Then I read the rules again. There was no fee, no restriction on numbers
> of submissions from an individual writer, so I found another novel that
> needed expanding and fettling. I wrote a couple of tens of kwords. Sent it
> off. The deadline was now about a month away. I found the beginning of a
> detective novel which was less than forty k. I added 40k+ in a couple of
> weeks. Tarted it up and sent it off. Fortunately the deadline then
> intervened.
>
> I was bulging with words: when I lay in bed and thought a sentence my
> fingers twitched as I tried to type them, a single thought would blow up
> into a tale, a saga, a donaldson. If someone had given me an incentive, ie
> money, I could have run them off a novel on almost any subject in a month.
>
My god! Congrats & like that.

> Anyone want a detective novel -- two characters I have come to love, a
> built-in publicity campaign and a reason to go out walking on a Sunday
> afternoon? I can see two or three sequels that would sprout from the
> original. If you're desperate I could probably rattle them off in a year.
> Or less.

Um, maybe at some point I'll actually think about taking you up on that.
Knowing you, it would definitely be interesting.
>
> BTW, the dates, times and numbers are very vague: for a couple of months I
> wasn't in. And I've not written a word since.
>
I think that's called burn out; or in other words, take a break. Oh, you
already are.

In article <13mioi3bpd0be9b@corp.supernews.com>,
Suzanne Blom <sueblom@execpc.com> wrote:
>
>"Dorothy J Heydt" <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote in message
>news:JtAAAB.G2F@kithrup.com...
>>
>> I've tried that too. It comes out as outline notes, not usable
>> prose. Helluva note, isn't it, when you can't even write
>> rubbish?
>>
> Actually, my first drafts usually turn out to have been worse than outline
>notes because I don't realize right away how ghastly they are. Sounds like
>you're used to having your first drafts be workable, which mine never are.
>Luckily, after the books been whipped into shape, I forget how bad it was
>originally.

Nnnnno, my first drafts (back when I could write coherent ones)
were sort of halfway between outline and text. They'd be a
summary of actions. Then I'd go back and put in more
description, and more dialogue, and little sub-actions to flesh
out the actions, and --- kind of like doing a snowflake curve,
making it more and more complex. For those who've read _A Point
of Honor,_ that whole long sequence of Greg and Mary going down
into the depths of Elfheim, and following the party of
adventurers, and the cleric recites Genesis in Latin and when he
says "Et facta est lux!" the whole place lights up and the Elves
get burned and they rescue Theodoric and all that stuff ... went
in on the second rewrite.

But I can't even come up with the outline-like first drafts now,
darn it.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djheydt@kithrup.com

Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

> Nnnnno, my first drafts (back when I could write coherent ones)
> were sort of halfway between outline and text. They'd be a
> summary of actions. Then I'd go back and put in more
> description, and more dialogue, and little sub-actions to flesh
> out the actions, and --- kind of like doing a snowflake curve,
> making it more and more complex. For those who've read _A Point
> of Honor,_ that whole long sequence of Greg and Mary going down
> into the depths of Elfheim, and following the party of
> adventurers, and the cleric recites Genesis in Latin and when he
> says "Et facta est lux!" the whole place lights up and the Elves
> get burned and they rescue Theodoric and all that stuff ... went
> in on the second rewrite.
>
> But I can't even come up with the outline-like first drafts now,
> darn it.

Maybe whatever you're trying to write at the moment needs to be written
differently?

Never mind the CFS for a moment and treat this as a straightforward
writing problem. If someone comes up to this group and says 'I used to
write like this, but it doesn't work anymore' there are two things I
would throw into the ring. One is the road you've gone down - what has
changed in your life that you no longer feel able to do this. The other
is 'have you tried working differently'?

This is the nine-and-sixty thing. Every novelist is different - methods
that work for one person are simply not right for another. But every
novel is *also* different, and the way I wrote my first novel has proven
to be a bad way of writing novels; and the way I _almost_ wrote another
novel (93K of fragments that were never knitted into a complete work)
has *also* proven very bad for me, even though it generated plenty of
good words and good plot very quickly. And the process that had given me
three novels has gotten me well and truly stuck on my WIP; only this
time I do not have a better process to replace it with, so I'm on the
third revision and only slowly putting things together in the way it
ought to have been, and if I'd had a better process I could have saved
myself some time.

I think your CFS is making it more difficult for you to tackle the
problems and come up with better solutions, but I don't think it is
causing all of them.


What methods of writing have you tried? What has worked for you in the
past and what was absolutely utterly not for you?

Catja



--
writing blog @ http://beyond-elechan.livejournal.com