Body Surfing
October 11, 2001
7:45 a.m.
My "to read" pile has once again piled up way, way too far. Sigh. And after I had done such a good job of getting it worked down this past July.   I am looking at my summer and wondering where it all went. One of my goals for this summer was to finish a novel. I sacrificed almost everything toward this goal. My short story output went way down. I have left manuscripts sitting on my desk rather than expend energy in keeping them circulating (meaning my acceptance/rejection numbers as also way down). At some level, I managed to satisfy my goal -- the draft was done, after all. But in the end the book is not finished. In fact, after a few weeks to look at it, I'm wondering if I'm really trying to cram two books worth of stuff into a single volume. I mean, it grew from a projected 100K to about 135K, and I cut down a lot of stuff to make it come in where it did. So, I'm spending my time examining the story to see if it makes more sense to cut it into two pieces, or whether I should just forge on and write a 180K+ story and say to heck with it. The silver lining in this is that I've actually gotten a lot done this summer, despite the fact that I don't think I have a completed manuscript to show for it. This, of course, is like losing the Super Bowl -- intellectually fine, but something less than satisfying. Between working on this book, and doing a quick scan of Glamour of the God Touched this summer, I've learned how complex a novel really is. The Novel Dares are great, and I'll probably always work that way at some level. A Dare lets you hammer out a story and get the events all kind of down someplace. But the Dare's shortfall is in character development. Sometimes character development takes weird twists, and requires a little more thought than hammering out words. After working on novels for nearly a year now, I think writing a novel is a lot like body surfing. Huh? You say? Body surfing? Where the heck did that come from, Ron? Well. When you body surf you wade out into the ocean and watch the water rise and fall. You look for the breaking wave, and when you see one, you throw yourself into it. If you catch it just right, it picks you up and you ride it, rushing and roaring, all the way in. Sometimes the waves are huge and everything is easy. Other times the waves are dinky, and it requires both patience and skill to ride far at all. When you're writing a short story it just takes one wave. Or maybe two. But a novel is made up of a hundred waves--and they all have to be good waves. I think Dare detractors are worried that writing fast means settling for bad waves. "What if the sea's dead that day?" they ask. "What if there's nothing to ride?" Well, then, in that case, you don't finish. The challenge is to keep wading out, though. And the glory is to make sure you enjoy the feeling of standing in the water and tasting the salt and seeing the pelicans and all that stuff. The novel is a beautiful form. I just wish I could get it right. Quicker. [grin] Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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