Crazy Over It
July 6, 2001
7:31 a.m.
Matt Horgan is a friend of mine from work who also happens to be working on becoming a better writer. He asked to see my outline/storyboard the other day. Yesterday, I brought him around and let him have a look. I showed him the storyline--how I intermix color and characters and how you could see the story come together by the way the character lines and colors moved across the wall. I explained how I taped various bits of my research up in places to remind myself to use it as I rewrote important parts. I checked my e-mail. [Hey, can you really be within ten feet of your computer and NOT check your e-mail?] In the end he was crazy about the idea. At least, I heard him mutter "This is crazy," under his breath and I just naturally assumed ...   After the last few days' work, I'm up to about 350 pages of reworked material. I'm feeling pretty good about the first 300 of these, but am thinking the last 50 (maybe 100) need me to go back and take the polishing stone to. I'll go back and do this now. It's important to me right now to know that the stuff I've got under my belt is "good" (defined as "as I want it to be") because I've always known that the real work I had to do with this draft will be in the last 150-200 pages. The Fast Draft gave me the story, and it gave me places to sketch out the character set. But I'll fully admit that the grit of the piece--the real work--was left only halfway addressed. As I work on this detail, I want to know that the rest of the book is essentially ready. I want to be able to tell myself that the hard work will pay off because when it's done, I'll be done too. (I know, I know ... are you ever really "done?" Don't confront me with reality when I'm working on a book. If you haven't been able to tell yet, my entire process toward creativity is geared toward finding short-term ways to ignore reality. Reality, after all, is that it's danged hard to sell a book until you've sold a few--then it's just hard. Why would I face this roadblock while I'm writing one? Talk about being self-destructive...). Anyway, I'm almost down to the really hard work. So I'm going to first go back through the last 50-100 pages to see that things are back in line there, then spend a couple days doing a front-to-back pass on the second draft in order to make it as rock-solid as I can make it. Then I'll take the plunge and dig out the ending. You know, it's beginning to smell like a book. Hmm ... maybe I shouldn't put it quite that way, huh? Leaves me open to all sort of grief. Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"The satisfaction of actually finishing that album is still something that I'm very grateful for." - Emmylou Harris - On working on "The Ballad of Sally Rose" |
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