Monday 11 March 2013

Rewrite: This is getting serious

I am going to blog every day for the next ninety days. 
I have accepted the awful truth. I am going to have to rewrite this novel from page one to page three hundred and thirty-three or however many it turns out to be. It starts today. At fifteen hundred words a day, that's sixty days; I mean sixty days of writing. Add in all the other days, family days, shopping days, travelling days, lazy days, high days and holidays, and it will be ... more than sixty. I'm reckoning on ninety but I could be wrong.
At fifteen hundred words a day, I should complete a chapter after two days writing, however, this is not a mathematical exercise so of course it won't be like that. It will be like this: totally crazy.
It must be crazy to think I can write all day or even part of a day and then write a blog. So I'm crazy but I intend to try. It's not you I'm trying to convince, it's me.
Haven't I been rewriting this novel for the past three months? Five months? Yes. But that was then and this is now. There's no time like the present. I have done a lot of work on this rewrite already. I have restructured. I have written chapter one so many times that I can't bear to think about it. But I am starting again.
What I have been doing for the past month (and more) is to try and stitch together stuff I have already written. I have indexed my notebooks and I have ordered my files conveniently and I have delved back into Draft Two, iterations 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 ...4, 5, 6, and 7. There is so much good stuff back there and I am reluctant to let it go. But I have to start again. Write fresh. Write from my head. It's all in there somewhere.
So that's the plan. Stay with me. I'll only do it if I know you're watching.
Today, for a starter, I have restructured parts 1, 2 and 3. That's the whole thing. I have  converted the telling of the story to one Point of View. The pain! The pain! So it is now a story in three parts: What Broderick Did, What Broderick Did Next and What Broderick Did in the End.  
Yo!
And I looked at Chapter One - Don't scream! - and rewrote it. Twice.
Am I serious about this? Yes. Serious and/or crazy. Your vote. 
Thank you.
Ends

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