I is for Instant
Instant rice.
Instant fame.
Instant coffee.
Instant messaging.
We live in a world of immediacy. Takeouts and drive-thrus. Accelerated learning. Microwaves and ready-to-eat meals. Information provided in a split second, via Google.
With an attention span of a ferret on Pixie Stix, we demand instant satisfaction—NOW!
Overnight Celebrity
I would love to wake up tomorrow—much, much thinner and with a best-selling novel. But instant weight loss is as unlikely as an instant novel.
I am lucky enough to be able to write a first draft of a novel in a single month. I participate in NaNoWriMo every year and I always win—cranking out a 50,000 utterly crappy first draft.
But I have never shown a first draft to anyone. They are truly awful. I plot obsessively before November so the directions are there. But the draft rambles about, the characters repeat themselves and act out inappropriately, and the language is cliché, flat and boring.
Starting January 1st, I start editing. I read through my first draft, making notes and trying not to cry. I keep the secrets my characters accidently told me in the first draft and remove the personality straightjacket I tried to put them in. I star my favorite sub-plots and prune out the ones I plotted. I create charts, maps and profiles so I can keep it all straight.
Then I go through every page, working from the beginning until the very last page, creating a cohesive second draft—which is sadly, as lousy as the first draft.
Because even though, I have spent two months editing the draft it took one month to write, I am still not done. I’m not even half way done. After draft two, I start again at the beginning. There will be many more drafts, as I do more research, fix more words, polish more dialogue and get more reader input.
I know writers who quickly crank out a first draft, take a few months to edit and then publish by the next year. It would be nice if the process worked that way for me. I admit fast sounds better than slow.
But I am not a microwave. I am a crock pot. It’s the only way I can write. I’d hate to think what I would produce if I tried to be something I’m not.
What do you want NOW? What will you do today to work towards it?
Tomorrow’s post is on Joss Whedon.
When I was younger I’d churn out utter dross in a month and assume that meant I’d become a famous writer in less than a year. Ten years later I finally finished my first novel. Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell my younger self what things are really like, but I think that if I hadn’t had that kind of naive optimism, I wouldn’t have held on to the dream until I was mature enough to really start working to make it happen.
I’m not a patient person, but in my writing, I’m definitely a crock pot.
Good point you make about weight loss as well. Imagine being able to lose 10 pounds overnight. The downside would be that it’d probably mean we could gain 10 just as quickly …
Excellent point, Paul. I have been writing since I was a kid. I was always told it wasn’t practical to be a writer so I made a career of marketing and copywriting. I still don’t think it is practical but it won’t ever be possible if I don’t try.
Thanks for posting!
Great post–it’s so true, isn’t it? We want everything NOW–in fact my teen doesn’t even GRASP the concept of wait… I think readers, too, have lost their ability to wait and see… have to be grabbed in the first page, the first paragraph, even… what happened to reading the setting and getting to care about the characters first? Man, I miss that… I prefer books that have that (but get no publisher will touch it with a ten-foot pole, so I succumb…)
And I write fast, then do the rounds like you do–very similar to my process.
Well, crockpot, you better learn how to be a microwave…what are you going to do when your first published novel is a HUGE success and they ask for Book 2 in a few months? hhmmmm…….???????????????????? Yeah, stew on that for a while, becasue I know it’s going to happen. You must be prepared. 🙂 XOXOXO