Monday, November 5, 2012

Riding a dead horse - the hard truth

Gory title, I know. I'm referencing a tongue in cheek comment I made in a previous post about word count. But here's the difference between beating a dead horse and riding one: you could beat a dead horse for all kinds of crazy reasons: anger issues, severe mental breakdown, or maybe you have an odd way of coping with grief. But to hop aboard and think that the poor lifeless creature is actually going to take you somewhere - anywhere - that's a different story all together.

Ok, time to cut the metaphor and get down to brass tacks (hehe.) The hard truth is this: sometimes your first book - or your fifth - or your twentieth - is just a practice run. But let's focus on that first book, because it's like a first love. It matters in a way that you've never felt about anything else before. You doodle about it when you daydream, talk about it until people start turning the other way whenever they see you coming, cover your wall with pictures of it, stop spending time with friends and family because this first true love consumes you on a soul level. And that kind of love is blinding you to its faults.

I want to interject here and say that I'm not writing this post because I've never ridden a dead horse. Boy howdy have I. The first book I wrote dove deep down into the bleakest recesses of my heart and dredged up all kinds of feelings. I poured them out onto page and page, bleeding words like a stuck pig. It was my truth. My story. So it had to mean something to someone else. Right? I shopped that story all over the place. I even went so far as to print the whole thing out and mail it to a professional connection I'd made at a women's magazine. This is ALL of what she ever said about it: thanks for the notepad (a gift I'd included in the package.) Ouch.

I had to admit to myself that the book, worn out and floundering, had run its race and come up short. But I still won. I learned so much about arc and pacing as I toiled over that first love. I learned about developing my characters and letting them have minds of their own. The hardest lesson of all: I realized that 99.9% of the time, my manuscript is not nearly as ready to run as I would like to think. Patience is a virtue - and one I still have to chase down with a stick from time to time.

That first book was my first true education as a writer. I penned a first word, and made it all the way to the last. I wouldn't trade a thing for all the mistakes I made between them. But I also no longer expect it to get up and run. I've stopped trying to edit and rewrite it into something that will sell. It is my teacher, plain and simple. And at last I've let it retire to a lush, green pasture. Its work here is done.

p.s. As soon as I get my house unpacked, I'm going to jump into the NaNoWriMo universe! So I probably won't have a chance to blog much this month. I will definitely do a little diddy at the end of the month to let you know how my first NaNo attempt turns out. I'm already starting a week behind... but I work best under pressure.

8 comments:

  1. Good luck on getting into NaNo. Your not blogging as often will be so understood :-)

    I tried to ride a dead horse, my first MS. I had to send that poor thing in for cremation. As you wisely mention, sometimes you just got to let it go.

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    1. HA your comment made me laugh out loud. I think 99.9% of writers have that first MS preserved in an urn somewhere. Thanks for commenting!! Are you doing NaNo?

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  2. Ouch! Brutal truth! I too have learned a lot from my first book. The list of mistakes I made is long, indeed. But I consider the fact that I recognize those mistakes now as a sign of progress!

    I chose to beat my dead horse until it resembled something respectable. Eh, you know. But I know the next book I write will probably require much less work to read like it should, and that's all thanks to this first one.

    Yay for learning! Great post!

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    1. Thanks, Laura! And I totally agree with you - being able to spot those mistakes (that I STILL do in my first drafts) is such a huge step forward. Feeling confident about how to correct those mistakes is another big step - and a journey I think I'm just beginning.

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  3. My dead horse is sitting pristine and in a 3 ring binder- never to be fiddled with again on my top shelf in my closet. LOL- No it truly stinks, with 36 full chapters, most written out by hand because at that time I despised (Crazy to think now) typing. I co wrote with a friend and realized I;m more of a one woman show when I write. That MNS took 4 years to write.

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    1. Hey Summer!! Yeah - I used to be a diehard pen-to-paper person too. And I think my first MS took about that long to write! I started it in college and then finally took it off life support about 4 years later. I can't imagine trying to co-write. I'm way too much of a control freak for that. I can barely let Tanzy tell me what to do. Much less another writer with his/her own vision. Heck no. Of course, watch me ask you to cowrite something with me soon. Then forget I said any of this.

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    2. LOL- Tanzy is pretty head strong... :)

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  4. Unfortunately there are a lot of dead horses now being self-published as ebooks. It takes determination to write and finish the thing, it takes talent to know that it's part of the learning process.

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Ramble on, y'all.