twoeyelidsdown - Tumblr blog

[twoeyelidsdown]

Third Time’s a Charm?

Spent two weeks outlining and outlining and plotting and plotting and now I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to write. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

Weekend Plans

[twoeyelidsdown]

all writing is rewriting

and rewriting. and rewriting. and rewriting. and rewriting. and rewriting. and rewriting. and rewriting. repeat. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

description

"Carrying with him the air of some unspoken defeat." From a book i’m reading now.

[twoeyelidsdown]

A note on outlines

for me, the hardest, yet most necessary, part of writing. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

Found this really helpful. First person FTW. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

Last night. Edits vs Bridget Jones

[twoeyelidsdown]

back

i have things to say now, i think. i did the read-through, find a lot of places i needed to improve, let it roll around in my head for a few days, and then found inspiration in an unlikely source -- a friends instagram post. 

so, off we go. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

Reading List, First Person

The Girl on the Train 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night 

The Sun Also Rises 

The Boston Girl 

[twoeyelidsdown]

First Draft Edits, Round 1

Just finished the very first read-through. A few takeaways: 

- No doubt this is a #shittyfirstdraft. (but hey, it’s something!) 

- Needs more character development. I don’t love the idea of backstory, but i don’t think i’ve filled some of these relationships out enough. 

- Why the hell did i think it was a good idea to use a first person narrator (because you wanted the reader to FEEL what she was feeling, right?) Awesome. That doesn’t work so well in practice. Or, it’s much harder to pull off than I thought it would be. * Note to Self: FIND SOME AUTHORS THAT DO THIS WELL AND FIGURE OUT HOW THEY DID IT. 

- Not enough detail. Major scenes need more context, more development, more heft. 

- Pacing. It’s way off. This brings up issues that I’d thought had already been resolved. Do I keep the beginning where it is? Or do I intro these characters at a later stage in their relationship and work backward from there? Ugh. 

- At least new five scenes that I know need to be written (This is a good thing. The whole point of this read-through was to figure out what was missing. A lot, apparently.) 

- Most importantly though, I’m looking forward to getting back into it and making it a lot better. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

Current View

[twoeyelidsdown]

I know there’s a lot to be said about  “shitty first drafts” but I’m just about halfway through now and.... yikes.

[twoeyelidsdown]

Friday night, post work. Many more scenes like this forthcoming.  

[twoeyelidsdown]

And so the editing of Draft One begins. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

Just finished reading this book and highly recommend it. I put it on my list because I heard it had a really interesting first-person narration. I don't think I've ever felt like I've known a character so well. As someone who has written 75% of her novel in first person, I found this to be both intimidating and inspiring. Well worth the read. 

[twoeyelidsdown]

Here she is! The finished first draft. It arrived last weekend when I was too sick to do anything other than admire how many words I've actually written. All those mornings spent at the computer when it felt like nothing good was coming added up to something in the end. (Moral: When you think it's shit, it might not be shit. And it's better that have something instead of nothing). 

Going to dive back into it this weekend, this time with a red pen in hand. I've been looking forward to this part for a long time.

[twoeyelidsdown]

Finish the damn book. Nothing else matters. Stop second guessing yourself and write it through to the end. You don’t know what you have until you’ve finished it. You don’t know how to fix it until it’s all down on the page.

Lauren Beukes (via writingbox)

Repeat after me.