Writing... Drafting... Writing
When I write, I do a lot of drafts. I’ve blogged about this before.
The thing that’s new is, I’ve realized that with the current overly ambitious work in progress, I’ve become completely absorbed in it to the point that nothing else is getting done. I haven’t posted a blog entry in several weeks. My exercise attempts, I’d hoped to be up to playing Zombies Run three times a week, but it’s fallen to two and then to one and now it’s been at least a week since I’ve gone. And when I’m not writing this draft, I’m pretty distracted. People ask me questions about how things are going, and I nearly start to talk about the evolution of the people in the world I’ve made up, or the geopolitical situation in that world, but instead I say “fine” and hope they don’t think I’m having a total mental breakdown. I may be, but there’s a reason for it. More so than usual. I’m juggling an entire extra world of information in my head.
The good news is, I think I finally have that information. Not all of it. I think I know about 90-95% of what I need to know to write this book. More importantly, I at least now know what I don’t know about the setting and the things I don’t know are down to things like: what is the currency like or what customs do people have in various regions that will differ in a way to help flesh things out as the characters travel through the world. The only downside is that I need to take a day away from writing the draft that’s taking away from everything else in my life, in order to come up with the currency and their customs and every other detail not already in this swollen Scrivener file.
Soon though I hope to have everything up to what I can reasonably call a first draft. Then I can begin the iterations and in ten or so passes before it gets to a second draft and I can get some people to actually read it and tell me what I’ve done wrong. Hopefully between now and then though there will be blog posts, and exercise, and I won’t completely breakdown. Ah, the dread disease optimism.
