Avi

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Running downhill

Running downhillWhen I achieve what I call a first draft of a new book—which I have just done—I am flood­ed with relief. It seems as if a mir­a­cle has hap­pened. There have been moments a‑plenty—ask my wife—when I have announced “I can’t do this. It is too hard.” As I approach the end, how­ev­er, and I real­ize I am approach­ing the end, it is as if I were run­ning down­hill from a moun­tain I labo­ri­ous­ly climbed. Mind, run­ning that last down­hill  patch is a dan­ger­ous thing. I am will­ing to go and step any­where, as long as I reach the bot­tom. The writ­ing then (out of des­per­a­tion) is awful. Truly.

Yet, while I call this a first draft, I am remind­ed of some­thing my friend Natal­ie Bab­bitt once said to me: That when she gets stuck, she goes over what she has already ready writ­ten. So much eas­i­er. And it feels as if she is mak­ing progress.

The point is you are mak­ing progress. It means that by the time you get to that last page of the first draft, you have gone over the first pages (or more) forty or fifty times, (grant­ed, out of des­per­a­tion). But you prob­a­bly have the voice you want, a bet­ter sense of char­ac­ter, sto­ry, etc.

In oth­er words, one of the best ways of mov­ing for­ward is being stuck and going back.

3 thoughts on “Running downhill”

  1. That’s exact­ly how I do it, Avi! Being kin­da OCD, I keep close track of my drafts. Usu­al­ly by the time I get to “First Full Draft” I’m actu­al­ly on Draft 9, 10, or 11 — and those are just the ones I’ve print­ed out.

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  2. This is encour­ag­ing as end­ings are the most dif­fi­cult part for me. Run­ning anal­o­gy is poignant. It may be dan­ger­ous run­ning down hill but it sure is exhil­a­rat­ing. I appre­ci­ate the pos­i­tive twist on being stuck; does­n’t have to be a dead end so much as a detour that leads to see­ing some­thing over­looked before. Every­thing in life is more tol­er­a­ble when giv­en a healthy pur­pose. Thank you.

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  3. I wish I could just write to fin­ish. Every time, I reread (revise because why not) and sit posed at the key­board I’m think­ing, “Just write what comes to mind. Let the char­ac­ters speak to you.” But noth­ing. I’m at the cli­max of this sto­ry and don’t know how to pro­ceed. Last week, I had a rev­e­la­tion. My sto­ry dead­line is “meh.” As most rejec­tion let­ters for oth­er man­u­scripts tell me, “The sto­ry was not strong enough.” Nei­ther was this one. I don’t think the read­ers will care enough. My new chal­lenge is to think about what is my char­ac­ter’s urgent need, and what is the dead­line to accom­plish this. Is it strong enough that read­ers will care? Once that comes to mind, I think I’ll be able write to the end and I will cel­e­brate before more revi­sions take place. For now, I’m still staring. 🙁

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