Trash can writing

First of all… this has been a cra-a-a-a-zy week! My dryer starts acting like it’s possessed by aliens. My car turns into a zombie. And the heat! High 90’s, heat index 105! What the heck? This is New York, not Florida!

Now, about that writing: When I started writing Nostalgia I rattled off the first two-three chapters and then got stuck. There was so much to do, and I didn’t know what to do next. So I got this crazy idea that–since this is an historical novel– I could at least get the “facts” on paper and add the characters and plot later. Lots of endless exposition, sure, but I’d fix that on the next draft.

Uh…..no.

I got about three months and twenty-thousand words into writing and realized that 98% of it was absolute crap. My writing was wandering through the details of a war that were mostly irrelevant to my story (the details, not the war).

It’s awful!

So, I made a hard decision to start over. I went back and refreshed my memory on story and plot arcs, trying to get some inspiration. Not that I don’t know story and plot arcs, but apparently I don’t know them well enough. One of my big issues is backstory. I tend to do “info dumps” for the first couple of chapters, get that backstory right up in your face. But that’s the absolute wrong way to introduce back story. And now I’m down to just one chapter that I’m happy with.

Long story short, a writer has to know when crap is crap, when to try to fix it, and when to toss it in the trash and start over. Time to eat a little humble pie.

I should probably be frustrated that I wasted all that time and energy, but I’m not. It took me awhile to see my mistake and while I’d like to have an edit-ready draft by the end of the year, there’s no point in that if it’s cringe-worthy. So for the next little while, I’ll be concentrating on arcs, getting the beats where they belong and ramping up the intensity as any good story should.

And by the way, I’ll take my pie a la mode.