The Writing Brain
A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a book by Holly Lisle on my Kindle. She was talking about how she would occasionally have to delete many, many words from her novels because she went down a wrong path while writing. As much as 60,000 words, I believe she said.
Wow. That’s a lot of words to scrap.
Manuscript. Scrap.
Manuscrap.
Welcome to my psyche, ladies and gentlemen! Don’t mind the occasional flashes or thunderous explosions. It’s not a thunderstorm — those are ideas going off. And those cobwebs over in that corner . . . well, I wouldn’t get too close to that. Just in case.
Gary Henderson
Gary Henderson is an amateur author who lives in the Greater Atlanta Metropolitan Area with a chef housemate. By day he is a mild-mannered software developer working for a major health-care company. By night and on weekends, he occasionally creates and destroys worlds.
8 Comments
Talya Tate Boerner
Crap that’s a lot of scrap.
Gary Henderson
Yeah, she’s scrapped more than I’ve WRITTEN on most of my projects.
Frances D
She scraps a whole book. I wish I could get 60k words together. LOL.
Gary Henderson
I know, right? I’ve also heard several people on podcasts who said they wrote a number of novels before getting one good enough to publish. I believe Brandon Sanderson wrote twelve before getting his “first” one published.
Terra
I’ve cut 20k of the novel I’m revising, so far, and I’m only 60% complete with my revision. I’m expecting to mostly rewrite the rest, all the way to the end. (30k+/-) And those numbers don’t include the fact that I scrapped 30k of the incomplete “zero draft” when I picked this thing up for completion in April.
Writing is rewriting, they say. It kind of sucks sometimes. (Like now.) But has to be done, and the book will be better for it.
Gary Henderson
When people ask, “How many novels have you written?” I’m tempted to ask, “Does it count as three if I wrote the same one three times?” :)
I’ll probably end up tossing out most of what I’ve written on both passes for the current novel. Because of those flashes of light and thunder. And possibly because of those cobwebs . . .
Corinne Rodrigues
My word! Errr…hers I mean….60k of them. That’s more than I ever wrote I think. ;)
I’m wearing a helmet while reading this. Good luck, Gary.
Gary Henderson
Hehehe! Hopefully, no scrapped words will fall outside the construction zone. But I do recommend hardhats and steel-toed shoes at all times. Just in case.