The Perks of Starting From Scratch

There are few things that are scarier for writers than a blank page and a blinking cursor.

Well, okay, I may be exaggerating slightly, but blank pages are pretty intimidating. And there's something about starting a brand new project that is just plain daunting; there's a sense, with every new novel, that you have to go back to square one and figure out how to write all over again.

I think this feeling intensifies somewhat when that new novel is a complete and total rewrite of an old novel. On top of feeling like you're starting over entirely, you feel a bit like a failure for having put so much time into something that is just, well, not good.

Rewriting isn't evil, though. I've found it's actually incredibly helpful. And that first attempt isn't a failure. Yeah, it's not right, but there are things that can be salvaged and any writing that you do is going to help you learn how to write better (even if you always feel like starting at square one with each new novel. Neil Gaiman and John Green feel like that, it's gonna be fine).

Those of you who have been about the blog for a long time probably know about my manuscript, A Terror of Darkness, which is about 67,000 words and is about a girl who teams up with a werewolf to break her family out of prison in Revolutionary France.

The first iteration of that novel... wasn't about that.

Almost everything about that novel has changed since I wrote the very first words of it in high school. The title changed. Rose and Avar had different names (sort of; Rose and Avar were their nicknames in Version 1). It was set in rural France about twenty years before the Revolution rather than in Paris at the height of the Terror. It involved a lot of wandering around in the woods figuring out magic stuff.

And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. I mean 163,000 words' worth of wandering around in the woods.

... yeah.

Obviously, this first draft was Not Good. I had to radically change almost everything about the manuscript to turn it into something that I truly feel is publishable.

And yet, that first iteration of Rose and Avar's story is probably the first "not good" manuscript that I wrote and can think back on without having a miniature heart attack. There are things that I really liked from that manuscript that didn't make it into the new version. They didn't work, but they weren't terrible, and I had fun writing them. I learned a lot, somehow, from floundering around in the woods for 163,000 words. And I learned even more from people's feedback on that massive quantity of words. I don't think I could have written the story I am really quite proud of now without that lengthy exercise in not-quite-right-ness that came before it.

I'm also essentially "starting over" with the novel that is to be my senior project, although I didn't quite finish that one. I think it's going to make so much more sense and just feel more "right" once I start it over.

So feel free to start from scratch. It can be kind of fun, rather than completely terrifying. And sometimes it helps you stop wandering around in the woods and figure out the story you're actually trying to tell.

Epic Rewrite Time!

Song of the Day: I Know (A Song in Ten Words)

Now that I have finished Letters to Oliver, have handed it off to my dear friend Erin and am not letting myself think about it till it's time to dive in for revisions, I have started the monster project for this summer - revamping (all right, rewriting) A Bridge to War. I wrote about 900 words just last night, and I am quite pleased with it so far. Already it feels darker and more realistic and more historically accurate and more interesting and just all around better.

I had originally planned to rewrite the things that needed rewriting and salvaging as much as I could from previous drafts, but after last night I'm not sure that's going to work. In 3 pages, which will probably amount to about half a chapter, and less than 900 words, I said what it took me 17 pages, 2 chapters and over 5,000 words to say in the draft I was previously sending out to agents. Good Lord, but this thing is overwritten. Still, I'll probably take bits and pieces from the original, because there is still a lot that I like about it.

My plans for revision are as such:

1. Bump the timeline up about twenty years, from 1771 to 1789. Nothing happens in 1771. LOTS happens in 1789, obviously. And I have plans to combine a very important part in which my characters are imprisoned, my climax, and the storming of the Bastille. Good fun. :)

2. Make absolutely certain that everything is historically accurate, from settings to dialogue. My best friend is apparently far more Google-savvy than I, for it took her approximately five minutes to find an 18th century map overlay for Google Earth France. WIN. Also, I've got Wikipedia timelines and a European History textbook stolen from my friend Erin for fact checking, and Rosalind Laker's novel To Dance with Kings for dialogue and tone. Methinks that I am set.

3. Cut extraneous everything. There's a lot of dead space wandering around in the woods. There are also ten million extraneous characters. Some of the ones getting the axe include Nayiri, who was such fun to write but rather flat and useless, to be honest, Amelie, Rose's cute little sister who really serves no purpose at all, Rose's cousins in Paris, since Rose herself now lives in Paris, some of Avar's too many cousins, and some of my made-up government officials.

I think that once I tighten up the plot and actually align it with historical events to give this wreck of a trilogy some direction after book one, all will work out well. I'll also be adding in a little bit more of the romantic element that got cut in order to size draft 1 down to a slightly more manageable draft 2. But if I can cut 4,000 words in one night, hardly without a thought, I think that can go back in.

ETA: My mom the French major has absolutely, positively vetoed my title idea. Which is fine; I was just sort of musing aloud and asking for feedback on the musing. Until I get a better idea, it's going to stay as A Bridge to War. Because that took me long enough to come up with in the first place.

DFTBA!