Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-05-10 09:34 am
azurelunatic) wrote2002-05-10 09:34 am
The Notional 95,000 Word Blank
I have a novel. Well, a novel-in-progress. It's so close to finished that I can taste it.
So what's my hangup?
All the blanks.
It's a very picaresque novel, and intended to be so -- a series of short clips of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rosalynde and company in motion.
I have a plot. I have characters. I have 413 pages of single-spaced 12-point standard font writing.
And it's been written over the period of the past seven and a half years, from September/October 1994 to the present.
This poses a problem.
When I started writing this, I was fourteen. My writing style has evolved from mudbrick to marble, or at least I'm hoping so. Maybe I could realistically expect granite. I've been going back as I write, and polishing things, and weeding out bad stuff, and adding in the things that need to be there for the plot to go. They were there in my head, but they need to be written down, so in they go.
Consequently, as the plot's changed at least three times over the years, there are old key plot points that are no longer valid and no longer support anything, well-polished, somewhat good examples of teenage writing, that need to be removed as soon as possible.
Much as I love Diane Swiftclaw as a character, and as much as I adore that scene on the holodeck of the alternate-universe Voyager, not to mention the thing with the gravity and the techs (*how* much voltage did I have flowing through that ... oh, right, it *was* a power cable in there for just that reason... hey, at least I had them using optical datacable!), they all must go. Diane Swiftclaw belonged to someone else before I teleported her sensibilities into that body, and that body is belong to the Star Trek universe. The alternate-Voyager is all mine because the official Trek creators would scream at what I'd done to make sure all the serial numbers were filed off, although the universe-tone with Pluto Station isn't. I can give that story the old Heinlein try sometime later, now that my writing skills have become mine once more. The L.A.S.T. concept is mine, and I could do great things with that. I'm thinking, put the boy scout from the Trouble into that ship and have him get in deeper...
By the time I have all the bits of writing that I need to remove removed, I'll have bazillions of gaping holes. The idea is going to be something like a Greek temple, the classic kind: a bunch of pillars supporting an overarching roof. I know what my roof is, both the material and the things carved upon it. I just need to space out the columns evenly, make sure they have design schemes that get along with each other.
And I need the body of my writing to be accessible to me! This is my main drive to get my computer back. Just before her cord died, I'd been writing some new things on her, ones that hadn't been backed up anywhere else yet. Yes, I probably could write them again. I just don't want to need to.
So what's my hangup?
All the blanks.
It's a very picaresque novel, and intended to be so -- a series of short clips of
rosalynde and company in motion. I have a plot. I have characters. I have 413 pages of single-spaced 12-point standard font writing.
And it's been written over the period of the past seven and a half years, from September/October 1994 to the present.
This poses a problem.
When I started writing this, I was fourteen. My writing style has evolved from mudbrick to marble, or at least I'm hoping so. Maybe I could realistically expect granite. I've been going back as I write, and polishing things, and weeding out bad stuff, and adding in the things that need to be there for the plot to go. They were there in my head, but they need to be written down, so in they go.
Consequently, as the plot's changed at least three times over the years, there are old key plot points that are no longer valid and no longer support anything, well-polished, somewhat good examples of teenage writing, that need to be removed as soon as possible.
Much as I love Diane Swiftclaw as a character, and as much as I adore that scene on the holodeck of the alternate-universe Voyager, not to mention the thing with the gravity and the techs (*how* much voltage did I have flowing through that ... oh, right, it *was* a power cable in there for just that reason... hey, at least I had them using optical datacable!), they all must go. Diane Swiftclaw belonged to someone else before I teleported her sensibilities into that body, and that body is belong to the Star Trek universe. The alternate-Voyager is all mine because the official Trek creators would scream at what I'd done to make sure all the serial numbers were filed off, although the universe-tone with Pluto Station isn't. I can give that story the old Heinlein try sometime later, now that my writing skills have become mine once more. The L.A.S.T. concept is mine, and I could do great things with that. I'm thinking, put the boy scout from the Trouble into that ship and have him get in deeper...
By the time I have all the bits of writing that I need to remove removed, I'll have bazillions of gaping holes. The idea is going to be something like a Greek temple, the classic kind: a bunch of pillars supporting an overarching roof. I know what my roof is, both the material and the things carved upon it. I just need to space out the columns evenly, make sure they have design schemes that get along with each other.
And I need the body of my writing to be accessible to me! This is my main drive to get my computer back. Just before her cord died, I'd been writing some new things on her, ones that hadn't been backed up anywhere else yet. Yes, I probably could write them again. I just don't want to need to.