The 1000 words a day challenge is done!
But there's lots to do. Time to channel my inner Ishiguro...
It’s July and my challenge of writing a wild draft of 1,000 words a day has been and gone. I was going strong on the book until except…
I’m at the end. Or nearing the end, anyway. I have a plan to end the book. I know what needs to happen but I have no idea what to write.
This happened earlier in the draft and is one reason why this first draft has taken so long to finish. I started it a couple of years ago and have been pottering about with it for ages. The month’s challenge was meant to race through and then the real work of adding layers, depth, extra info and meaning and place and characterisation can start. But the issue is that I can’t even put down terrible words for the last scenes – because I think something is missing in the middle. I absolutely need more plot. I thought I’d sent tests to my main character but they all seem to be quite easily solved, or something that she’ll work out when she leaves the novel at the end. I need more tension, more bad guys, more disaster, SOMETHING.
Then the ending will feel like a triumph. Or at least a reconciling.
I think this actually stems from the same problem as last week’s excess of tea. I have lost the art of massive plot nonsense, the extremes that really test people. Instead, my characters do sensible things to safeguard themselves and their future, all the while drinking tea. I need them to go and do something stupid. Essentially, they’re all too nice and I have an eye on what would actually happen in real life which has definitely restricted their actions. I’ve noticed this in the past when my daughter has made up scenarios for her dolls. She makes a suggestion, and I completely ruin it by mentioning that in real life that would never happen or you’re not allowed to do that or whatever. Fortunately, she usually ignores my dull restrictions and carries on. Clearly I need some of this attitude when I’m writing.
But this is the thing about writing. Some people can bash out massive plots and huge action and all sorts and some of us need more time and a basic dull story to then add a load of tension. I was sitting thinking about the story this week (the weather has been good and I’ve been able to sit outside the coffee shop on the way to work watching people) and generally beating myself up for not being as creative as I’d like when The Booker Prize tweeted the following quote from Kazuo Ishiguro:
“Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I let them remain and ploughed on.” He’s talking about The Remains of The Day, which he famously wrote in a month. God knows I will never write anything as beautiful as that novel, but what a comfort to know that actually, I can make these boring scenes that go nowhere better, just like proper writers – Nobel Prize winning writers – do.
(I ran an event with Ishiguro once. He’s a lovely man. My signed copy of The Remains of the Day will be one of the things I try to save if the house is on fire.)
Want to subscribe? Go on, it won’t cost you and I’m happy to ramble on about creativity on a semi-regular basis so there won’t be a lot of emails…
So where am I? Ploughing on. I sat and wrote a document that listed all the things that need to be raised or changed earlier in the story so that the ending works and I want to try and do some of those before I get to the end. That way it will be easier to know what to resolve and how by the end. But I also wanted to make sure I complete the 1000-word challenge – so I’ve also bashed out a few mini bits of dialogue for these scenes and some draft blog posts to try and keep the numbers up. Essentially, with these self-imposed challenges, there’s no reason I can’t just stop writing new words and instead go back and start editing. But it’s the principle of the thing. I’m a stubborn completist. And look, this has been a handy 700 words to add to the tally.
Stats:
30,721 total words
Writing every day except 30 June.
An average of 1024 per day.
A plan of what happens in the book, some scenes and an idea of what still needs to be improved, so I’m not floundering in the next stages.