This was a really good weekend for writing. We had a REALLY fun writing meeting with Quark and I got some very helpful feedback for the first chapter of The Phoenix of Nova Terra (aka The Lost Colony), and now after another rewrite I feel really happy with it.
On Friday, as I was walking between the FLSR and campus, I thought about the fact that I haven’t really been getting into my new novel, and wondering what was holding me back. I realized that it’s this game that I just recently started to play through for the second time, Final Fantasy Tactics. Excellent game–one of the best in the series, IMO–but as I reflected on it, I realized that it’s been distracting me, both in terms of how I use my time and how much I think about my stories. It’s hard to immerse yourself in an imaginary world when your mind is fixated on something else. So, I decided to drop FFT and erased all my saved games. Now, I’ll have a lot more time to think about and write in the worlds of my stories.
The writing meeting on Saturday was great! We had about eight people there, which was cool, and joked around quite a bit. The best thing I think is that the new people aren’t afraid of criticism, so we tore into their stories and everything was still fine. We went a little over time, but I think it was ok because we spent a lot of time bantering and getting to know each other. That’s important too, I think–to get a sense of community and friendship going.
I rewrote the first chapter of The Phoenix of Nova Terra for this meeting, but something was wrong with it and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Well, the meeting helped me to see what it was–the action didn’t start soon enough and the protocol between the officers on the ship wasn’t all that interesting. So I took another look at my story and realized that I was trying to give too much of the big picture, the grand overarching “this is how the main character’s mission is going to help mankind,” and not enough of the concrete details as seen through the eyes of Ian himself. Man, even after writing for so long, I still make mistakes like this! But once I saw the problem clearly, it wasn’t that hard to fix it.
Now, I’m really excited about this story, and I’m ready to move on and edit everything else. Really, about 70% of the work is going to be cutting out all of my “discovery writing,” the stuff that was really just me figuring out the story by explaining it to myself. There is a ton of that on every page, and it all has to go. But once it’s gone, I really do think that I’ll have a sweet story underneath it all.
I just want to have it done so that I can say, once and for all, that I have a novel under my belt–a novel that I can be proud of. It’s not enough to say “I’ve written a rough draft”–I want to be able to say “I have written and finished a novel.”
Three novels by fall 2009…it’s going to take work, but I’m going to do it. The momentum is building, and I’m getting back into writing.
