Friday, 2 October 2015

TGIF

It has been a long week, for several reasons: partner home late more nights than I'd like, work on the second draft of Strike Dog going slower than anticipated.

I was talking to my partner about the last draft of Strike Dog and she made the comment that the pacing was a bit slow in places, and perhaps I should add some more inciting moments.  I feel that there's enough excitement in the story as it stand what with giant reptiles, rampaging robots and stuff, and had to think about the feedback I was getting.  In short I interpreted the comment as some stuff in this story bores me.

Having been in an email exchange with Peter Watts, who very kindly allowed me to bounce some ideas off him, I realized I had written some boring scenes.

Boring because they were effectively 'as you know Bob' info dumps.  So I've been editing my story and as a result I've removed 7,000 words from the narrative.  I find this quite depressing in a way, because it feels like a lot work going down the drain.  Also, more importantly, it has slowed my progress down.   This is the really frustrating part of the week, because I feel I've lost momentum.  And keeping one's momentum going is a thing.

So TGIF.
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4 comments:

  1. Henry Hyde2 October 2015 at 17:13

    The work is NOT wasted! Put it into an 'outtakes' folder. You never know when you might have the opportunity to rework/recycle/reuse it. Banish depression! You are two people, a writer AND an editor. THIS IS WHAT THE EDITOR DOES. IT'S THEIR JOB! (Says he, currently hacking other people's articles about...)

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  2. RogerBW4 October 2015 at 14:56

    For example, you could rework them as introductory vignettes in the inevitable wargaming rules. :-)

    But seriously, keep everything. I store my writing under version control so that I can search through all previous drafts.

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    Replies
    1.  Ashley4 October 2015 at 15:01

      The cuts are not lost as I have all, and I do mean all the previous versions of every draft. I'm obsessive about keeping a record of all the changes.

      Delete

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