Tag: #FirstDraft

  • Outlining: New Possibilities?

    I am working at staying productive for this month. I was able to blog, journal, and even got in some sketching time with the kid yesterday. It was a very creative day, more than normal for me. On the fiction front, I was able to spend a little time working on an outline for a novel that I have been kicking around for about two years.

    And working on the outline was rewarding, on a level that I didn’t know existed in me. I was working on character development, and trying to figure out how to build a foundation that these characters that they would either fight against or learn to accept. And as I worked on these characters in an outline form, a narrative theme started to reveal itself to me. The story is about three guys who form a band, and I always thought the theme was about learning follow your ambitions, even through failure. As I worked on the characters, I started to see that the theme was actually about being open to possibilities.

    Most of my good friends are following their dream, and some of them have been chasing it for twenty years, and to be honest, very few have achieved that ambition that set them out so long ago. But very few of them are angry and bitter about it. (I have met my fair share of bitter actors, so don’t get me wrong, I know that chasing a dream doesn’t equal happiness.) But what keeps my friends going? What keeps me going? Is it staying curious, and being open to new ideas and possibilities?

    I don’t know, but I want to explore it.

  • Rewriting is a Skill

    I fully believe that rewriting is a skill. A skill that I do not possess.

    I am trying to make a better effort this time around at rewriting. Really putting my mind to it. Making notes on the first draft, formulating an outline, crafting the words to build the story. And I just about hate all of it.

    As I get older, I begin to see patterns in my life. One pattern I see is my attraction to acts of immediacy in the arts. I love Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, and Jazz. The theatre I have been the most successful at has been puppetry, which has been like pick up the puppet and go perform.

    It has been an artistic life and philosophy of, “First thought, best thought.”

    Yet, when it comes to my writing, my first thought is not the best thought. I have to work at a best thought.

    I remember a theatre professor back in college who told us that we had to learn to appreciate all the steps in the process of being an actor. Not love all the steps, just appreciate. You can’t be an actor if you hate auditioning, as the hatred of that step will come through when you try to get a job. But if you respect that step, then you will hone the needed skills that will help you audition, which helps you get to the next step.

    That’s where I feel like I am coming to. I don’t like rewriting, but I have first drafts that need reworking, and this is the next step in the process.

  • Admitting Truth, and Novel Chapters

    There are a few things I think is best to just to admit to myself, and you while I’m at it…

    One is that I love reading crap on the internet, and going down rabbit holes that eat up about 30 minutes at a time. When I make this mistake, I swear to myself that I will never do it again, and then about an hour later, I’m right back at looking stupid crap, eating up valuable time.

    Two is that I hate our health insurance system. I especially hate how dental insurance runs a completely different type of insurance scam that is somehow legal. (So, I pay monthly for dental insurance, but it covers nothing?) I have never had a good experience with health insurance, and I never will.

    Three is that I keep debating if I really like doing the work of writing, or if I like the idea of doing the work of writing, and I may never come to a true conclusion and that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

    You can see how my day has been going.

    The last major project I need to work on today is the novel. Sadly, as I was journaling earlier today, and I find myself stuck in a corner that I have created when it comes to the novel. I have three decent chapters for the “first act” of the book, but I feel like I have run out of gas. I know where the protagonist needs to be at the start of the “second act” but I am have trouble getting him there, or even seeing how he will get there. The best I could come up with today was to just write as much of the first act as possible, and then when stuck, just start the second act, and see what happens.

    I have to keep reminding myself that this is a first draft and that it won’t be perfect. I keep having so much trouble accepting that as the truth.

    Ah…

    Four, my first draft will be terrible and that is okay.

  • Steal That Time to Write

    Last night I was able to get about 500+ words done on the novel. (My goal is 1,000 words a day, but that might be too ambitious.) I had to steal moments to get it done while I was making dinner. The brussel sprouts were sautéing, and I added a paragraph; that sort of thing. It was very scattered, but I am trying to finish a first draft; it doesn’t have to be perfect.

    It reminded me a conversation I had with a playwright friend of mine about setting aside time to write. He is a married father of two, both kids under 10. He is a stay at home dad, but that position does not afford him any additional time to write, as any stay at home parent would tell you.

    What my friend told me was that before kids, he wrote anytime he felt like it. Now, as a stay at home parent, he had moved into a system of taking notes when an idea hit him, and then having to find the time in his schedule to write out the idea. He actually felt it made him a better writer. As he told me, he might only have one hour to work a day, so he knew that if wanted to get his idea accomplished, he had to focus and use every minute of that hour.

    Not that I am at that point, but I am beginning to find this to be solid advice.

  • Comedy, Inside Jokes, and a First Draft

    When I was in college, and I was a theatre major, I had a running debate with a good friend, which was, are Shakespeare’ comedies funny? He said yes, and me, to be a jerk, said no. My main reason for the stance I took is that comedies are full of inside jokes that the audience never notices, and what Elizabethans found funny, no one gets anymore. Yes, the puns survived, but puns aren’t funny.

    Also, for comedy to work it needs context and surprise; context established the frame work for a surprise to be funny, and the surprise is funny because context says the surprise shouldn’t be there. Hence, if we don’t understand the context, how can the surprise be funny, or even to be understood as a surprise in the first place.

    Then there are inside jokes, which no one gets except a handful of people, having been orchestrated by the writer. I had a friend who recently had their screenplay produced and released. He had put several inside jokes in the screenplay, most of them honoring quirks his wife has which he loves. All writers do this, which is why I say that Shakespeare’ comedies are full of jokes we will never understand.

    I bring all of this up because I am trying to hammer away at a first draft of my novel. I know full well that my first draft will not be good, and I am really trying to get it down so I have a starting point to begin crafting the story. So, as I rush through it, I am seriously cramming it full of inside jokes, to the point that I started to get self-conscious about it. I know my wife will read the draft, and most likely roll her eyes at me. Most of it will find its way out of the story, as the characters start to stand in their own, and not need the crutch of me anymore.

    But, I always wonder when I read a novel, if the name of the street that a character lives on is actually an homage to author’s mother’s maiden name.