Details, Details

It's been a while since I've posted about my writing.

Lately, I've been getting back into the habit of trying to spend an hour a day on my writing. Right now, that means revision. While my Nanowrimo novel from 2008 sits on the back burner for a bit (it needed some feedback, and I couldn't stand to look at it anymore), I am working on the second draft of my Nanowrimo novel from 2009.

I realized tonight that, depending upon how you measure, I'm 2/3 of the way through it. Since I'm basing that on what page I'm up to relative to the last page, I'm probably further than that, since I deleted a bunch of scenes and pages along the way. The end is in sight, and this makes me excited.

I don't know why, but I actually enjoy chopping out parts of my story. One less paragraph or page or scene to spend time reworking/rewriting/tweaking, I guess.

But sometimes, I worry I've chopped too much. That scene that seems to add nothing, what if it tells us something about the character? What if it helps with the pacing? What if I've taken out all of the quirky parts just because I don't think they drive the plot forward? What if I've somehow sanitized it, made it more generic?

These are the thoughts that sometimes go through my head, the worry that, in revising a scene, I will somehow make it worse instead of better.

But most of the time, I just enjoy the process. This time around, I made some massive structural changes from Draft 1 to Draft 2, and I've also been enjoying how the novel keeps getting shorter, because I know my original word count was too high, and the new one will be significantly lower. And there's something satisfying about making it all work. 

And there's also something satisfying, in general, about just getting back to my writing. Over the winter, I moved away from it for a bit. I forgot how good it feels. I keep wanting to stay up later to work on my story. It's a good feeling.

So Nanowrimo is over. And I finished the novel in November for once - just barely - as noted in my previous post.

And now it is going to sit in a metaphorical drawer (which is to say, unopened on my computer and on my flash drive) until at least January.

In the meantime, I need to move my brain to something else, so I picked up last year's Nano novel, because I was in the middle of working on editing it when November started, so it seemed like a good idea to go back to it.

On the plus side, Alexis's voice (last year's) is different from Ben's (this year's), which is a good thing. I hear her differently in my head, and I wrote her differently.

On the minus side, I am having such a tough time focusing back in on the other novel now. I am still so rooted in this year's that it is hard to go back to a different project.

I've never done this before, moved from one project to another in such a short timespan. And I had no issues moving in the opposite direction - when November began and I put down last year's to start this year's.

Anyway, it's interesting, and I felt like sharing - so I did.

There is still, as always, something special about stepping inside that voting machine and throwing the huge lever across to sink in your vote. There is something even more special about casting a vote in what will be, either way, a historic Election Day. Everywhere I go, I hear stories about people who woke up when the polls opened, who waited an hour in lines that stretched around the block, or snaked back and forth until they were four layers deep. I arrived at my polling place at 4:30 pm, and it was set up as it always is. My district (all of once city block) still votes in the same place in the same room. There were six or seven people ahead of me - a pretty short line - though it still took about 15 minutes to get up to me. But since my district is all of one city block, it should be no surprise that the person ahead of me in line lives in my building, so we stood there chatting.

The poll worker told me that in all the years she has been doing this, it has never been so busy. That just made it feel even more special. To be able to vote in an election like this one.

I do hope it turns out the way I want it to. Ideally by tomorrow morning and not a month from now. (Yeah, I got to vote in *that* election too. Eight years ago today was the first time I ever voted.)

I cast my vote around sunset, even though it was not yet five pm. Apparently, election day now also means fall and winter to me. The weather was mild, but there were leaves on the ground, I noticed for the first time this season. It made me a bit contemplative, to emerge at 4:50 from the school where I vote and note how it was already getting dark.

Then, I came home and wrote 2,000 words of novel. Despite the 2,000 I had to un-write last night to fix a plot problem (had to backtrack), I am already past the 10,000 word mark. A fifth of the way there, and enjoying it immensely.

52,229 - or so the word counter says...

Before I saved it to a .txt file, it was 51,320. Not sure how saving it as text added 900 words - but either way, I am above 50,000.

Plus, the rough draft is finished.

Now what? :)