The novel

I've set the short stories aside for a while so I can focus on the rewrite of the novel. The first draft was 454 pages, 130,000 words, but I decided the scope wasn't large enough. No really. I've added characters and done more research on places, so I expect the rewrite to be 500+ pages easy. (Then I'll revise and pull out the Stephen King 10%).

At any rate, the rewrite is not going well. I write 30 pages, delete them, write 40 pages, delete them, write 50... This is apparently how JRR Tolkein wrote LOTR, like waves on the beach. But since LOTR wasn't published until he was 62, I'm looking for a more effective approach. There are two things at work here. Problem number 1: editors and agents only request the first three chapters (and I seriously doubt they read that much of every submission). so the opening has to be strong. No pressure! Just be brilliant.

Solution: Forget about the opening. Just keep going, you can always revise it later.

So that would be okay except for problem number 2: I'm convinced I'm missing crucial details as I go. Well, I'm convinced of this mostly because I keep noticing that I am missing crucial details as I go. So, as much as nearly every writer extolls the "organic" method of just letting the story flow, I just can't do it that way.

Solution: An outline. A very, very specific outline.

I started work on that yesterday. First just charting out physically where the action moves, then filling in what the characters need to be doing. There are seven main characters (two are more important than the others since they share the POV), three important secondary characters (one of whom never physically appears but his presence is felt everywhere), and about ten less important secondary characters. Did I mention I had widened the scope?

But this is fun, charting out the arcs for each character. Now when I sit down to write, I'll know what needs to be accomplished by the end of the chapter. I hope it will kill the panic factor.

It's like storyboarding a movie. Nearly every filmmaker does it these days, but Spielberg was one of the first. He said once that storyboarding allowed him to be more spontaneous on the set, not less, because he had worked ahead of time exactly what he needed. With that knowledge, he was free to use what was available to meet that need; he wasn't chained to the preconception. I've taken this as my philosophy for homeschooling. I schedule each schoolyear out to the day, which most homeschool moms think is nuts, but I find this allows us to be more spontaneous. I know when I need to have certain things done by, so on any given day I can feel comfortable moving things around or making it a halfday.

Well, I hope it will be true of writing too. So I went to bed last night still thinking about the characters and their arcs, since I've only got the bare bones of an outline so far (when you have something less than 2 hours a day to write, things move slow).

Then I had this dream, and it wasn't about my book. It was about Harry Potter. What's up with that? Can't my subconscious stay on task? No, it says, "here's a cool ending for a book you didn't write". It was weird. Harry's head split open, specifically his scar did, and a baby brother came out of his head, like a Zeus/Athena thing (it didn't kill him; it was magic). The spell Lily did to protect him involved his unborn baby brother (in my dream). Must be my subconscious mind's interpretation of the older magic Voldemort doesn't use, the love thing. Or perhaps my fond wish for Harry to have a family of his own.

So you can see why I don't use my own dreams for my writing, cause that's just creepy. Of course Voldemort's face coming out of the back of Quirrel's head was creepy too. You be the judge.