Stage 09: New Day, New Draft

I came into 2019 with a ten thousand word start on this new version of Gorracula.

It had a central character. It had a narrative voice. It had the legacy of work I'd put in on previous versions providing a narrative skeleton.

In 2013 I had gone to the Midwest Writer's Conference with a previous version of this story. I remained on their mailing list so I got word they were hosting a conference centered on finding an agent. I have never relinquished the focused hope that I will become a published writer and I used this event as a point of focus and motivation.

I bought tickets as soon as they went on sale in January. It was scheduled for May and I decided I would have a draft ready by then.

As it drew closer that came clear as a naive hope. Life was just too busy. I was making progress but not that level. I took mornings on my vacation to Florida to write by the ocean while everyone else slept and the sun came up. I snagged stray moments between work tasks but was not getting near my goal.

So I scaled it back and decided I would have 50,000 words written. I began waking up an hour earlier than I needed to in order to write for the month leading up to the conference. This had me up at 5:30 am and I'm fairly certain my proper work-work suffered for it. but I got to my goal and by the time the agenting conference came around I had the comfort of knowing my book was well over half way done and I had met a goal.

I got to make a handful of encouraging pitches to the agents in attendance. I came away with greater energy and self assurance. I decided to let off the gas until the end of the semester when life would become more open. At the beginning of June I decided I would treat writing as my job and finish a draft by the end of the month.

I insisted on a thousand words a day, or more. I started waking up an hour early just to write again. I plugged and grinded and worked and worked.

June 30th, 11pm, one hour left in the month to meet my goal, I typed the words, "The End."

I had my draft.

Now I intend to edit and polish for the month of July then I will seek representation for Gorracula.

I have a plan, I have a book and I have time. I am optimistic.

Read PT 10.

Gorracula Stage 08: New Everything

The title of this post is a purposeful overstatement.

In 2018 I began rewriting Gorracula: a Tale of Science. I Gave it a main character, someone who had never existed in previous versions, rather than just expanding on an existing character. Other than that I did not set out to explicitly change anything else.

I did some extended free writing trying to find this new individual's voice and once it emerged and once this person started guiding the story it became a lot more obvious, piece by piece, what still had a place and what no longer belonged.

I tried hard to preserve my previous structure by splitting the chapters between ones narrated by this main character and ones told by an omniscient narrator. But the pieces collided and began to seem too much like I was writing two competing books. So eventually the story telling has fallen to this new character.

This voice not having been along for the ride up until very recently actually brings a fresh eye to what had become some very familiar set pieces. The basic plot structure has existed in recognizable form: shifting, expanding and chipping away like a coastline over the course of centuries, for nearly a decade now. So it has been useful to put the exposition in the hands of a fresh observer.

To extend the coastline metaphor, if you were to look at the earlier versions of this story and compare it to what it is emerging as now it would be similar to looking at 16th century maps of North America vs. ones from say, 1860. I'm not quite up to satellite imaging fidelity but at least Florida  is no longer bigger than Texas and I've filled in where Oregon should be...so to speak.

As of now I have about 25,000 words of my new draft and a fairly clear plan of attack. I have a main character and an abbreviated internal timeline for the story so it doesn't go wandering on for metaphorical months and years.

Only time (and work) will tell if any of it matters.

Read PT 9.

Gorracula Stage 07 (2013-2017)

It has been three and a half years since I posted here.

I have been working on Gorracula in dribs and drabs that entire time.

I left the story of the book's progression in summer 2013 when an agent at The Midwest Writer's Conference asked to see a sample of my book. I sent it. She told me to send more when the book was finished. Then I went back to school. I was still very unsure of my writing abilities and felt like I needed guided practice and time to develop if the book would ever take a decent shape.

I finished my creative writing bachelor's degree in May of 2015. I had taken a novel writing class that went a long way toward helping me drive the story of the book forward and finding what didn't work. I had also taken the summer of 2014 and made concerted progress, treating writing like a job, blocking out five hours a day meant specifically for writing.

That process led me to a clearer shape for the book than it had yet had. But I also had some distressing insights. Distressing because they revealed story elements that wanted to be introduced but which would require rewrites starting at the very beginning of the book.

I plugged the new ideas in and worked as hard as I could make myself work. By Fall 2015, the time I initially started this blog, I was nearing the end of a serviceable complete first draft. I entered a crowdfunding contest through InkShares.com and tried to build a network of interest around Gorracula. It came to very little and meanwhile I was running out of money, trying to ignore the fact I needed to get a second job and time was running out on my life as a novel writer with the time to write his novel.

I began interviewing for jobs, crap jobs, the kind we all end up taking no matter how much we try to deny we'll have to work them. I got one at a call center, working product support of a tax preparation software (you know the one). I was set to start the first week of January 2016. I had a couple of weeks to give birth to a completed draft of Gorracula before that job started and I ran out of time and hope.

I had the business card of the agent I had met two and half years before in my wallet and I held it like a talisman. It offered me some hope if I just did my part and finished, maybe I had a chance. I finished my draft. It came in at nearly 200,000 words and for all its janky mismatched pieces, unwieldy character diversions and unanswered plot questions, it was a complete story I'd finished it. Then my call center job started and on that first day of work I sent an inquiry to the agent whose card was burning a hole in my wallet.

A week passed.
No word.

A month passed
No word.

I decided to write again. This time I heard back. Sadly she had switched agencies and was no longer representing fiction. She was kind and encouraging and that was all. It was done.

I took her card out of my wallet and continued work.

Obviously I didn't give up entirely. I tried to harness disappointment into motivation. I researched agents nominally looking for the type of thing I'd written.
No takers.

I gave the book to a couple people to read trying to get some feedback. No one finished it...not a good sign.

I ran out of steam and went on living. I didn't think about Gorracula for a good long while. When I came back to it I came to a difficult realization.

It was awful. It was structured all wrong, it had no main character, it had too many side stories and covered too much time. It was unfocused, uninteresting and tedious.

It would have to be completely rewritten. I kept maybe 40% of the first three chapters but beside that it needed to be rewritten.

Read PT 8.