Finished One Book; Resuming Another
A week or two ago I finished Kentauros, a 33,000 word novella (or very short novel) that I have been working on for nearly a year. Today I returned to the novel I had interrupted to embark on this this joie d'esprit.
Did I spend very nearly a year (with a few weeks off for the occasional book review) to produce only 33,000 words? Well, yes: the novella required intensive research, with prety much a whole new set of it for each successive section. My two or three years' work on my long novel -- itself interrupted by illness -- was put into dry dock for this. Looking it over today, I find (to my relief) that it hasn't suffered from dry rot during its period of neglect, but that I am now farther from all the intensive research that it had required. Will I be able to reconstruct all the little sub-plots and intrigues I was slowly developing? Maybe they are detailed in my notes.
I had better stick with this (very long) project from here on out.
Did I spend very nearly a year (with a few weeks off for the occasional book review) to produce only 33,000 words? Well, yes: the novella required intensive research, with prety much a whole new set of it for each successive section. My two or three years' work on my long novel -- itself interrupted by illness -- was put into dry dock for this. Looking it over today, I find (to my relief) that it hasn't suffered from dry rot during its period of neglect, but that I am now farther from all the intensive research that it had required. Will I be able to reconstruct all the little sub-plots and intrigues I was slowly developing? Maybe they are detailed in my notes.
I had better stick with this (very long) project from here on out.
posted by Gregory Feeley at 9:04 PM
7 Comments:
testing lois's theory.
Yeah finishing!
When I was writing, I found that the brain quickly shifted back to the previous gear w/o losing much momentum.
That's good to hear, because today I had to shift right back again -- a few more days' revisions on "Kentauros." I hope to avoid whiplash here!
I find that walking the dog brings back long buried memories of stories I've put aside.
Eventually, they all reach a critical mass and I start generating new memories that demand to be included in the narrative.
Off-topic: I'm afraid I haven't been able to keep up with the demise of Dueling Modems, since I was one of its earlier casualties. My access to the topics was lost when one of their computers blew up.
The loss of the dm.net email address is a mixed blessing. I now have to change all my personal information files on my credit card and other sites. But a few weeks ago, Faith inadvertently signed us up to a few dozen automated spam sites that can now go down the memory hole.
I always had trouble going from one writing project to another. It seemed, inevitably, to lead to woodworking or some other house project. Last time I built an entire outbuilding (where I sit as I type this.)
I hope you will pardon the intrusion. I just stumbled upon this blog and stopped to read (reconized the name from The Post). I am still smiling at Steven Gould's comment about building an entire outbuilding while trying to move from one writing project to the other (where he sits to write his comment).
I hope you won't mind if I bookmark this page and return now and then to get some advice? Seems like I may just have found a much needed decent circle of literary folk!
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