The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: zero draft

  • Embrace it!

    Lately I’ve been feeling the blahs. Fat. Inactive. Creatively null and void. Like I’m in a holding pattern.

    All of which means one thing: It is time to break out of my comfort zone [0].

    I’ve got several things I can do. I can go back to Contra dancing. I have a carpentry project planned, for which I have no appropriate tools or workspace. I’ll be taking my annual pilgrimage to Oklahoma City in a few weeks. As the weather gets warmer, I want to spend more time hiking through the woods or exploring some of the regional rail-trails on my bike.

    But for now, this minute, what I can do is start re-reading last year’s Nano novel.

    I had a plan last November [1]. I was going to take December off, let the novel chill a little, and look at it with fresh eyes January 1. Armed with a fresh cube of sticky notes, I would ruthlessly carve away the kruft until I had revealed What Exactly My Novel Was All About [2].

    Meanwhile I had some time to kill and did so by marathoning all fourteen of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels, plus the short stories. They say that Facebook is depressing because you’re comparing your gag reel to everybody else’s award winning performances. After reading Butcher, my own little urban fantasy looked like something the cat was trying to bury. Instead of a month of revisions, I quit after 20 minutes [3].

    I always advise new Wrimos to “embrace the suck,” because the zero draft of anything always sucks. Well, it’s time to eat my own dog food, because digging the diamond out of this dung heap is going to really, really… well, the metaphor rather speaks for itself.

    Embrace the suck, Aspen! You love the suck! And if I keep saying that, will it be true?

    [0] But I don’t want to leave my comfort zone! It’s so nice and comfortable!
    [1] You know what they say about plans and contact with the enemy….
    [2] And then rewrite the whole thing from scratch.
    [3] See prev. footnote re: Plans.

  • Writer’s Chores

    The short answer to this question is: I have no Earthly idea. Another short answer is: I wish I knew.

    I’ve written about eight Zero Drafts in the last ten years. Most are still unfinished, a few will never see the light of day, and a few are actually complete stories from start to finish and have some potential.

    But even the completed stories need work. Lots and lots of work. And the problem with that is, I am lazy. I don’t like work. Writing is one thing. Yes, writing is work, but it is also very freeing and therapeutic. And when you are writing a Zero Draft, nothing has to make sense. The writing part is fun. (more…)

  • Kill Your Darlings (Week of March 10)

    We think74203 it was William Faulkner who first said that a writer must “kill your darlings” but it’s been repeated endlessly ever since so that may be apocrypha. But any time there’s a discussion of the mechanics of a writer’s process, there should be some mention of David Mamet. He’s never visited the Cafe (at least as far as we know) but he’s influenced every storyteller out there today in some way, large or small, whether it’s realized or not. Mamet’s famous memo to the writers of The Unit is worth a read, at the very least.

    The Cafe regulars this week discuss our particular processes in approaching a zero draft (or first draft or sixth as the case may be) and turning it into something readable. We are forced to confront our worst writing, thankfully before anyone else sees it, and thus our own weaknesses. It can be painful but it’s certainly necessary. Like hernia surgery.

    We’ve got your table over here. Our servers are on the ball and ready to attend to whatever you need. Just flag ’em down. You don’t need a red pencil.

  • No secrets here

    Editing secrets? I don’t have any editing secrets. In fact, I am really excited to read everyone else’s posts revealing their editing secrets this week so that I can steal them.

    I have no editing process because I have yet to significantly edit anything. In general, when I’ve “edited” a manuscript, I’ve made cosmetic changes: grammar corrections, delete extra adverbs/adjectives and unneeded passages, and make the remaining sentences prettier. Maybe tweak dialog a bit. But I honestly haven’t ever taken the editing process past surface level.

    Don’t get me wrong. I’ve tried. I always make notes for bigger edits, send out my manuscript to my trusted writing friends for their feedback, and I always have big plans for revision. At first. But then I get overwhelmed and never make them. The Novel Graveyard gets bigger every year as I write and drop project after project.

    Maybe nothing I’ve written has been worthy of the edits needed. Maybe I’m just a lazy writer because I won’t actually do the hard work that’s needed to perfect a manuscript. Maybe it’s my fear of success as much as my fear of failure that keeps me from ever polishing anything beyond Zero Draft status. I don’t know.

    My editing goal, of course, is to someday edit a manuscript within an inch of its life and actually submit it. Hopefully someday I’ll get out of the lazy chair and do that. In the meantime, I have smaller goals: like write some short stories and edit them. And edit them again and then submit them places.

    I suppose my biggest editing secret right now is that I need practice. And confidence. My fellow Confabulators assure me that working with something smaller than a one-hundred-thousand word manuscript will give me the editing skills I need, while getting published will give me the confidence I need. Baby steps, right?

    For now, I am listening to all of my fellow writers’ editing secrets with open ears. Enlighten me, friends.