I was really excited when I finished my first draft of the novel I'm working on. Now, a few months and hours upon hours of editing later, I'm struggling to keep up with the edits. There are sooooo many things to fix that I'm feeling overwhelmed. I've been trying to just plug away and get as much done as I can each day (which sometimes means only a couple of paragraphs since my three year old doesn't enjoy being ignored). It seems like it will be years before this book is even ready to be read by my friends, much less by a publisher or an agent.
Thre is so much I want to do with this book. I'm a big nerd, so when I create a world, I want it to be as complete as I can make it; with maps and kingdoms and lines of trade and languages and customs and...well, you get the picture. So far as the actual draft goes, though, I haven't been able to include many of those elements--the details that enrich the story--because I'm still trying to hammer and smooth out the basic scenes for the plot. Right now, it still looks so much like a skeleton of a story to me.
Have any of you guys been here before? Any advice?
My gut tells me to just keep working at it, as painfully slow as the process seems to go. Eventually (about 80 years from now) I will finish it. I guess I'm just feeling a little...bogged down with everything I still have left to do.
Haha... I'm actually there right now... I have 8 full pages of notes (and bear in mind that one line sometimes constitutes an entirely new scene) for my screenplay. There's SO much I wanna do with it, and so many new elements, themes, and characters I still need to add. I actually still haven't done much in the way of re-writing, probably because the whole thing seems so daunting right now. However, I have started creating index cards for each scene and have tacked them onto a corkboard in my room. It really helps to have a visual outline like this to lay the story out, and I imagine it'll make it much easier to finetune my flow and structure. Do you have everything outlined? I would say work out the basics first, then sprinkle in the details. That's my plan...
ReplyDeleteI think the re-writing process is millions of times more trying than the initial draft because now you have to actually get everything right! Lol... Anyway, stick with it, and don't hesitate to bring your vents to the Table! That's what it's here for!