(You guys won’t mind too terribly if I turn this into a weird writing blog while I NaNo, will you? You won’t? GREAT! <3) So I've been doing NaNo this year. Before you ask, last year's NaNo is in publishing limbo. You know, where books go to hang out for years and years and years before a great and holy publisher decides to save them from eternal torment. Or something. (Don't worry, if it takes too long I'm gonna get impatient and e-publish). Well, I've been working on this year's NaNo, tossing words onto pages and in general just trying to get the story out. Here's the weird thing, though: it doesn't really feel like writing. See, I’ve spent the past year editing, so to me editing has sort of become synonymous with writing. Editing is where you chisel out the story. Editing is where, to borrow a phrase from Michelangelo, you set the angel free.
So I’m feeling really awkward about actually writing. I feel like making the outline was kneading the clay, writing is dumping it on the potter’s wheel, and editing is actually shaping something out of that giant, messy lump of clay spinning in front of you.
Of course, the catch is that in pottery, putting the clay on the potter’s wheel takes about half a second, and in NaNo, it takes all month.
It’s a weeeeeird feeling.
OH MY GOD YES.
That’s exactly how I felt about it and that metaphor is spot on!
While working on the story, everything’s taking shape, it’s exciting, plot points run away from you a bit, now I’m dumping it all down so that I can turn it into something much much better later on. Perhaps redoing the whole thing, but the main lump of it is there already now.
It’s my first Nano, and the most I’ve ever written. Wanted to write novels for God knows how long, and now I finally am. Woop! Loving word sprints, they’re a HUGE help.
Good luck to you, btw, don’t think I’ve said that yet 🙂
I envy your ability to get anything down on paper. My talent for writing extends to the occasional comment on a blog (and the even rarer posts on my own blog). It’s not that I have nothing to say, just don’t have the wherewithal to say it.
That’s not a bad way of putting it. The first time you put things down on paper is never the best; it needs go to through tons of revisions before you hit on a finished piece.
Maybe you’re having a weird feeling about it because you’ve outlined a bit TOO much, and it’s almost like the actual writing has had its thunder stolen by the outline (just a thought). I always have a rough outline first, then start writing, from there, it’s more like the outline is the framework for a building, and the actual writing is filling out the framework; there’s a lot more wall than building frame, or, more writing than outline (but that’s just me).
I make a link here to a good deal of the traffic on mobileread.com recently on whether the authors in there have employed good editors, copy editor and content editor, etc. The point of the editors is that it is they who turn a mass of words into a readable book, and this sounds like what you are doing, Pike, and it certainly sounds a lot like what I do, although I don’t use the nano technique, and dumping my clay on the wheel can take the better part of a year.
I can imagine that getting 25000 words (or however many nano is) on paper in a month doesn’t allow a lot of time to fine-tune each word. So, as you say, the creative process comes with the editing.
Maybe we should stop calling ourselves writers or authors and start calling ourselves editors.