Just one more: arguing with myself as to how to recompose the mood of a chapter, the long ago written chapter of my Great Writing Project.
An accomplished author once told me that you cannot go back and rework a book that you had written and left unpublished, unpolished, unfinished several years back. The changes in your life will put you in to a different mindset. You cannot, should not write as if you were writing then and so you must write as you are now. Meaning, you should rewrite the whole thing.
I am getting to the point where this is how I approach the finished chapters (roughly one third of the Great Writing Project):
The first dozen rewrites led to an improved product.
The second dozen rewrites led to a way improved product.
The next two rewrites made me squirm a little: I wasn’t in love with what was there when I opened the folder.
I feel that if I wait a significant amount of time to finish this, I will hate the whole thing and never let it go anywhere except to the garbage can next to Bagels Forever on University Avenue (which is where I dumped some twenty journals from my adult years when I concluded that I hated every word I put on paper in those years.)
Hence my current disgruntlement. My public (and eventually private) apologies.
UPDATE:
Tonight Ed and I, our DNA differences notwithstanding, found comfort in excellent pizza, and let me recommend that to you if you find yourself after a day of toilet cleaning, Great Writing Project hating and a generally feeling bearish. If you are in Madison and you cannot afford a flight to Napoli and indeed, you do not even want to struggle with parking near Porta Alba (another excellent pizza place, but inconveniently downtown), do go to Brutta on Monroe Street. It has the smell (and taste) of burning wood, the sauce is legit and the crust is as it should be. Food is the great mellow-izer.
I know this as a former owner of an advertising agency. Every copywriter in advertising is going to write a book someday. Most of them have already begun it. Most of them will never finish it. The one piece of advice I would give you regarding your Great Writing Project is this: kill your critic. Kill her now.
ReplyDeleteTypically, a writer gets to about chapter 3 when she realizes that everything written to that point sucks. So she starts again. Odds are a thousand to one that she never gets to chapter 3 again.
It's that pesky critic. Ignore her. Don't -- at all costs -- go back to page one and start over again. Kill the critic and continue with chapter 4. And don't worry about guilt. By the time you finish the first draft, your critic will have completely resurrected herself and, boy, will she have a lot to say!
You write the chapters consecutively!? Oh gosh. I write the first and last lines [after much introspection (?) etc. etc.] and then get it to flow from there to there. Frees me up to be 'inventive'.
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My experience has been that until it is completed, the GWP will resurrect itself in anything you attempt.
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