Your average, run-of-the-mill, novel is 300-400 pages long. While I’m READING those pages, I always wish there were more, a lot more. I could read a million pages of anything JK Rowling writes (what! You haven’t read Harry Potter – why are you wasting time reading this – go read it now!). I’ve been known to devour whole novels in a day and successfully feed the kids (OK – it was cereal – but that counts as food). I’m perfectly content spending hours curled up in my comfy chair (with or without the dog) cradling a large bowl of popcorn in my lap while devouring a fabulous novel. I’m sure you get it, I love to read. I’d be willing to get rid of the TV as long as I had a continuous supply of fresh novels waiting for me – which I do – the library.
But when it comes to WRITING 300-400 pages of a fabulous novel, feeling overwhelmed and inept are inevitable. But it isn’t the volume of pages alone that is intimidating, it’s making those pages engaging, original, and entertaining. As I write, I sense an invisible checklist exists for each sentence. Does it move the story forward? Does it tell me something new? Do I use active verbs? Can I layer in imagery to add depth? Would rearranging the words make it better without changing the meaning? Is it grammatically correct (this one always gets me. Grammar is the only class where my final grade was a C. But it was at 8 am during college – I could barely put pants on at 8 am during college, let alone understand the difference between dependent and independent clauses and how to diagram them)? That’s a lot to keep in mind while you’re juggling characters, story arcs, and romance.
So far, I’ve written the first seven chapters, and they’ve evolved pretty smoothly. I knew how I wanted to introduce the main characters and conflict – I’d been thinking about it for months. I had a lot of back story to fill in and second tier characters to introduce, which took up a lot of real estate in my book. I’ve even written a few key scenes that come later in the story – those were easy too, I’d also been thinking about them for months.
But it’s the in between events that are difficult to flush out and keep interesting. How do the characters get from just meeting to falling in love? What happens in between that makes Him look at Her as a potential girlfriend? What did He do to make Her say yes to a second date? And what do they do when they aren’t together? How do I make that interesting enough to keep you, dear reader, engaged and reading? While the major action is important, it is the between stuff that makes or breaks the book. That is where the layers are added, the back stories are filled out, the characters are painted so clearly the reader can picture them. That is where their story comes to life.
And that is where I’m stuck. How do I get past the infamous writer’s block?
Two words: persistence and revisions. And a lot of both.
I recently read in a writer’s magazine (I know, I’m so professional to read writer’s magazines), that a page a day is a book a year.* I can do that. A page a day is reasonable. A page a day is about 650 words, which is shorter than this blog. And revisions, well let’s finish the book first. I hope this one small, attainable goal will keep the progress moving forward
So, to keep tabs on my progress, I’m going to include the running page total each week.
March 15 (et tu, brute?) Page Total – 78 pages
So, dear reader, what overwhelming tasks do you have to tackle? How do you make them more manageable so you don’t curl up in the fetal position and whimper softly? And feel free to show your superior intelligence by identifying the literary reference associated with the date. Double points if you can name the cartoon where it was used.
