Monk Quixote

The man­u­script has sat, a paper hippo wal­low­ing on my kitchen table, for the past six weeks. I have prod­ded it, wrapped it in rub­ber bands, poked it with a pen­cil. I have picked at it, shouted at it, threat­ened it, with no result. The title page sits, unflap­pable, calm, pre­sumed dead.

Var­i­ous friends and fam­ily have given feed­back, and I have sought solace and inspi­ra­tion in the words of oth­ers. I have tried, and failed, umpteen times, to describe what it is meant to be about — and been cor­rected at nearly every turn by my read­ers. Lay­ers are all very well, but you have to make the ini­tial wrap­per attrac­tive — and not in a Rowan Atkin­son Love Actu­ally way. So, I’ve gone back to first prin­ci­ples — the book that started it all (Don Quixote — a children’s ver­sion; and just last night I fin­ished my skim re-read of Self-editing for fic­tion writ­ers, which is still the best cre­ative writ­ing ‘how to’ book I’ve read. Once I fin­ish this draft I will go back to Car­ole Blake’s From Pitch to Pub­li­ca­tion… just in case, you know…).

I’ve been stuck. A lot of the prob­lems with writ­ing long-form, I’ve found, are sim­ply mechan­i­cal… pro­ce­dural. How do I find the time? The will? What tools should I use? How do I work best? How much should I (attempt to) write each day? Revise as I go or at the end? Etc etc.

Well, the same prob­lem has hit once I fin­ished the first draft. How much effort in pol­ish­ing now, before com­ments? Who to send it to for first impres­sions? How long to wait? What to do with what peo­ple say? Learn­ing how to receive crit­i­cism from friends has been inter­est­ing — try­ing to dis­tin­guish between kind­ness and gen­uine praise, learn­ing to weigh per­sonal pref­er­ences against each other (even if it’s just for me to say ‘no, that character/word/plotline is fine as it is’).

And now, hav­ing run out of, well, desire rather than patience, for any more feed­back, I’m stuck as to how to edit. I made one unwit­ting mis­take in soft­ware choice. I use Scrivener for cre­at­ing sto­ries, which does exactly what I want it to do and no more. It helps me cre­ate and it helps me struc­ture. It doesn’t do page num­ber­ing, or other for­mat­ting things, so I tin­kered in Pages (I have a bit of a chip on my shoul­der about using Microsoft or Google tools). And, this is the bit I need to remem­ber not to do again, I cor­rected typos in my Pages version.

Pages, how­ever, won’t let me eas­ily make the fur­ther for­mat­ting changes I need to make to ensure it’s in stan­dard sub­mis­sion for­mat -  it’s screwed up first-line indents, chap­ter head­ing spac­ings,  added hyphen­ation for some unfath­omable rea­son etc. All of these a lit­tle harder than I could bear to cor­rect one by one.- it’s the wrong tool for what I want to do (or my knowl­edge and the time I’m will­ing to invest is poor — either way, it doesn’t get the job done). So I tried edit­ing on paper, but it just ‘feels’ wrong. I know — blas­phemy — but I’ve only ever writ­ten or edited on screen before. Proof­ing works bet­ter on paper, but I can’t move things around — or write in that pecu­liar man­ner I have (I write like other peo­ple paint).

So I’ve ended up back in Word, which tastes a lit­tle like defeat, but at least it’s a prag­matic defeat. And being me, it’s given me ample time to faff, to huff, to puff and allow myself to be too eas­ily discouraged.

And I have my list from the Self-Editing book:

1. How am I con­trol­ling time?

2. Resist the Urge to Explain

3. Don’t explain dia­logue that doesn’t need it (dia­logue qualifiers)

4. Check where and when speaker attri­bu­tion is nec­es­sary (I’ve used it reli­giously, throughout)

5. Ellip­sis for gaps — dashes for interruptions

6. Allow dia­logue to stut­ter, stum­ble and flow with com­mas. (Remove some of my stac­cato full stops)

7. Check for rep­e­ti­tion (of phras­ing, plot, dialogue/narrative)

8. Are all my inci­den­tal char­ac­ters really necessary?

But today I have run out of fur­ther excuses. Other than I’m tired. And Marek the car­pen­ter is butcher­ing the gar­den door as I speak. And I want to change the title of the novel. And I haven’t read enough of Riskglossary.com.

And.

And.

It’s a lit­tle scary, really, isn’t it? The longer you take to fin­ish, the longer you can pre­tend it’s a good read, that peo­ple will like it, buy it, and that I will earn enough to live off my writ­ing. That some mad fool might make it into a film. That I could direct. And write the music for. And win a simul­ta­ne­ous Bafta, Brit and Booker.

You know. Dreams. Dreams are only ever shat­tered by real things. If the real thing never exists, you can cling on to your dreams.…

And so to bed. I mean, work. See you on the other side of the agents’ draft.

Feel free to chas­tise me or give me tips in the comments.…