My role has changed from writer to editor with over 16000 words written towards the chapter that I’m working on. With a 5000 word wordcount being my goal for each chapter I have quite a bit of work to do. This large word count of 16000 words has been accumulated over the past 10 plus years, it is not in order, is not all in the same mood or tone, or even following exactly the same narrative. I expect to throw away a lot of sections, some I may use in the preceding or following chapters. Sifting through this collection of pieces that make up the chapter content to date has been a big task.
Reading through my past writing I have read sections I’d forgotten that I’d written, which has been a nice surprise at times. The volume of words read together capture my changing attitude towards, and hopes for, the novel over the years that I have been writing it.
Having such a variety of pieces all on the same part provides me with different perspectives that I hope to work together to create depth in the narrative at this point of the story – In writing so much I’ve given myself choices, which I hadn’t planned on doing. There has been a complete turn around on the protagonist’s attitude in some parts, and relationships between the characters have varied greatly over time. My plan of attack is to take the best of it all and make it one piece.
I’ve read through what I have then stepped back to digest it, then read it again. Slowly I am gaining an image of the happenings that I can edit these pieces into being, with new writing too of course. With so much writing to work with I plan to continue to read and reread it while gradually editing it into a whole.
The fact that I had written so many words seemed like such a big plus when I first realised but since I have begun working through the work, I am frustrated that I don’t have a clearer picture in mind. Having so many words it seems logical that I would be familiar with this section and ready to bang it out without too much effort. The more that I work through the words though the more I realise that I kept writing and rewriting to address my lack of clarity.
Slow and steady is the winning pace! I have a rough sketch of a first draft of my novel with nine chapters in mind so with this being chapter five I’m almost past the halfway mark. I will work through this chapter making it work as a first draft as best I can, then it should be down hill to the end from there.