SoCS - 20190122
Jan. 22nd, 2019 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johncomicI'm rereading my NaNo novel again -- what is this, the ninth time now? Amazed at how many things I am finding in it to change, after leaving it for a couple of weeks. I'm not even halfway through and have already made more corrections than I did in the last three read-throughs combined. This time it's not so much finding mistakes as things that are okay but could be better. A better word, a fresher turn of phrase. Always conscious of it feeling and flowing naturally, though, or at least what I find natural. I realize my tastes in that may be out of sync with other people's, but this is me, and I gotta write my book, not someone else's.
I still really enjoy it. I honestly can't tell if this means I did a good job, or just that I love my own voice not wisely but too well. I hope not -- people like that annoy me, and I don't wanna be annoying. To anyone else, or even to myself. Gotta brace myself for it, though. There have been times in my life when I have created something -- a drawing, a piece of writing, a song -- and at the time I was really proud, and got warm pleasure from it and from having made it. And then years later I come back to it and cringe. And I have embarrassed myself. It could happen again with this book, I know.
One hopeful sign is that I originally wrote this novel about twenty-five years ago, as a graphic novel script. The graphic novel never got drawn and I eventually realized that it never would be, or even could be. But Sharon urged me to resurrect it for NaNo and do it over as prose when I needed a NaNo story. And then I realized that, twenty-five years later, the story itself did not embarrass me. I tweaked it a little in November, but really not very much. So maybe this story is something that will endure for me. Gosh I do hope so.
Thinking about NaNo19 and hoping to come up with some kind of story for that, I would like to try it again. It was fun last year. I guess part of the fun was that I hit the goal with a piece of beginner's luck, so that helped me feel more sanguine about the whole event. Plus yes, I cheated, because I already had my story done, I only needed to craft the prose which told it. I make no bones about that, and I'm not overly concerned about it either. I had fun and I ended up with a novel, so what the heck.
I still really enjoy it. I honestly can't tell if this means I did a good job, or just that I love my own voice not wisely but too well. I hope not -- people like that annoy me, and I don't wanna be annoying. To anyone else, or even to myself. Gotta brace myself for it, though. There have been times in my life when I have created something -- a drawing, a piece of writing, a song -- and at the time I was really proud, and got warm pleasure from it and from having made it. And then years later I come back to it and cringe. And I have embarrassed myself. It could happen again with this book, I know.
One hopeful sign is that I originally wrote this novel about twenty-five years ago, as a graphic novel script. The graphic novel never got drawn and I eventually realized that it never would be, or even could be. But Sharon urged me to resurrect it for NaNo and do it over as prose when I needed a NaNo story. And then I realized that, twenty-five years later, the story itself did not embarrass me. I tweaked it a little in November, but really not very much. So maybe this story is something that will endure for me. Gosh I do hope so.
Thinking about NaNo19 and hoping to come up with some kind of story for that, I would like to try it again. It was fun last year. I guess part of the fun was that I hit the goal with a piece of beginner's luck, so that helped me feel more sanguine about the whole event. Plus yes, I cheated, because I already had my story done, I only needed to craft the prose which told it. I make no bones about that, and I'm not overly concerned about it either. I had fun and I ended up with a novel, so what the heck.
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