Viewpoint

I like to collect little snippets of advice from other writers, especially when they pertain to something I happen to be working on, and even more when they reveal something I hadn't considered.  As an example Paolo Bacigalupi made this remark the other day about completing the first draft of his WIP:

" ...[now]  I can pretty much see the whole book inside my head. I can see how each part interacts with every other part. How every change affects the whole."

 And this from Brenda Clough, who has finally reached that delightful point where the first draft is done, done, done!  

"We are now at that blissful stage of the writing process where, the first rocket-speed draft being done, I can brood over the work as a whole like God hovering over the surface of the waters...."

I have not yet reached that blissful state with my own attempt at noveling. Instead I am still marching ever onward toward some place I can finally resolve most of the arcs I've created.  I am intentionally not planning on bringing everything to a conclusion, leaving those to the imagination of whoever eventually reads it.  Yeah, I'm nasty that way.

With all the back and forthing I' m doing as I edit the first section and build on the third I am almost, but not quite at Paolo's point where I can look back to see the grand expanse of this little tale and am far from achieving Brenda's God-like knowledge of a satisfactory conclusion.

In the middle of the book is a few chapter's worth of words that presents problems in that the series does not bridge between the somewhat edited first section and the loose, stream of consciousness thing I'm composing on the fly in the last.  Do I cut the 10K words that stand like a plinth or try to sculpt it into something that is acceptable.   Cut or create, that it is ever the question with a novel.

Maybe I should go back to writing another short.

#SFWApro