It's Insecure Writer's Support Group day! For those writers looking for the support of peers, join us the first Wednesday of each month. Thanks to Captain Alex Cavanaugh and his minions, you can find more info and contributors here.
You know what they say about first drafts? All you have to do is finish them? Well, here’s what they should say about
second drafts. They. Are. Bloody.
Hell.
There I was editing away.
Cutting lines and adding paragraphs, and then, like a truck driver with a load of cement who encounters an unexpected cliff, I stomped on the air brakes. About a third of the way through my first
draft, I’d clearly gone on a backstory roll. Page after page of tangent,
essentially, an entire chapter that could be condensed into two or three
sentences and seeded in somewhere. Bottom
line?
The.
Action.
Just.
Stopped.
I’ve spent days now, pondering how to clean it up, how to
attach the threads from what I wrote before the dump, to events that occur afterwards.
Ugh.
I"m not an outliner.
I wish I was, but sadly, the only way I can get a story out of me is to
write it. I actually remember sitting at
the computer while this pile of backstory poured out, delighted to have
discovered something so important about one of my main characters. Yikes.
But, a wise writer once told me that backstory is how we writers
tell ourselves our tale. So, even as I ponder
how to cobble together this project into something palatable, I’m cutting
myself some slack. The brain dump may be way too much detail for anyone else, but the information allowed me to make an
otherwise unlikable character sympathetic.
That has to count for something, right?
Right?
I'm a few days late, but wishing all you A-Z bloggers luck for the month of April!
