August 29, 2004

When I finally threw in the Nanowrimo towel last October, I hadn't actually given my novel a full read-through. Not even once.

While I was writing it, I was afraid that going back and reading it would just make me over-analyze things (I know. Me, over analyze?) After I was done, I just didn't feel like it was time to go back and face it. By the end, I had been sort of flailing, desperate to get the plot going somewhere--anywhere. I had thrown in private investigators, and a bomb in the streets of San Francisco, and a fusion restaurant that serves 'moo shu fish tacos' and 'Hawaiian style chile relleno', and a sexy Latin love interest named Joaquin, and a Humboldt county murder mystery, and ninjas. Ninjas. In a sci fi novel!

But the fact remained that I liked my novel. Even with all the literary baggage. I always figured that, some day, I would forget how bad it was, resurrect it, and revise it into a decent first half of a novel.

Today is that day.

While clicking through my daily blogs for the first time in several days (Wow, dooce is in a mental institute? How odd.) I followed some of the links on The Book Stops Here, and I ended up in an endless maze of writing blogs, author websites, writing resource websites--and it finally hit me.

"It is time!" I said aloud, or maybe just in my head. "It's time to finish my novel. Starting tonight!"

What was I to do? If my brain tells me it's time to finish the crappy novel, then it's obviously time to finish the crappy novel. I called up the bookmark that I had prepared for the occasion: Holly Lisle's thorough instructions on the revising process. And then I opened up my novel and took a look at the monster.

The first thing I noticed, as I scanned it, preparing it for printing, was that the phrases that I was seeing were not nearly as hokey as I remember them. Sure, a few were weird, here and there, but overall the writing sounded fine. That came as a big relief.

The second thing I noticed, as I spell-checked it (which I had never done during the writing) was that the spelling started out good, but got progressively worse as the story went on. At the near-ending (probably from my 7000 word day) many of the sentences were entirely misspelled. Some words had all the right letters, just in the wrong order. My fingers, apparently, were not quick enough for my brain.

After that, I began printing the thing out. It is *still* printing. I cannot believe how huge this pile of exhausted metaphors is. I am starting to think if I'm kinda crazy for attempting to do this.

As the last, stunning line of my novel says:

“Tell me about it!” She yelled, to no one in particular.