the rough draft

[lobelia321]

Today I looked up one of my memoried posts, and I found this wonderfully helpful comment:

The rough draft is neither good nor bad. It is simply a work in progress. Judging it is not your job. Understanding it is.

It's from Jane Smiley's chapter in J.Checkoway (ed.), Creating Fiction.

Well, I found this helpful at least. It's what I meant by breakthrough. First, I am a sucker for inspirational mottoes. I have them up on post-its in the laundry (next to the Brad Pitt calendar), in the kitchen and around my computer (and on my computer on stickies). Second, I have been hung up and twisted in knots of perfectionism around and about this HP opus. And Smiley's point is so nice because it gets me away from the perfection (or not) of the text, and hence, the perfection or not of me, and towards a close look at the story. I really like the understanding not judging. I judge all the time. I judge myself very harshly. But if I am to click my brain into 'understanding' mode, it's different. Then the fic is outside of me.

I am going to try and maintain this mindset. And then I'm going to try and do what my beta told me months ago which is to write the bloody thing and especially to write the plot-crucial things.

I also must obsess less about this fic because I am not on sabbatical in order to write a fic. I am on sabbatical in order to write a book, goddessdammit.

Comments

curious

[http://users.livejournal.com/ca_tharsis_/]

HP opus?

I know you're a good writer, but I'm not sure what this is. I haven't spotted any reference to it on your web-site. And I've only just gotten up enough courage to ask, here in your journal. Do you mind telling me a little more about this project?

Thank you,

Catharsis

Re: curious

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, how many hours do you have? Also, the reason I don't mention it on my website is that it is an eternal shame-burden-trauma-delight-obsession of mine. Well, not eternal but I'v e been writing this fic since April 2004 and that is scary. It is an HP fic that got out of hand, ahem, so is now over 68.000 words long and not nearly finished, hence the epithet 'opus', and it doesn't have a title yet. I angst about it at irregular intervals in my LJ when I feel people can stand me doing it or I get desperate enough, and sometimes I flock these posts and sometimes I don't which will explain why you haven't got a clue.

Anyway, it is a long Harry Potter fic, featuring mainly Draco but also Harry and Dudley and Petunia. I don't know if you read HP but I was drawn into this fandom despite myself and before I knew it was writing this fic. I'm not experienced at writing and finishing longfics so have been reading hints about plotting (I'm not phenomenally good at plotting but the HP fic has a lot of plot -- which come to think of it may not be so good because I think a good plot is a sparse and focused plot, hm).

Anyway, that's what it is. I am never sure how much to tell people about the actual story as it may spoiler them or put them off or have a psychological effect of not-writing-instead-talking-about-it-on-LJ on me. Do you know what I mean?

Thank you for asking, though. That is very sweet. :-)

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

it's v. good advice. is the book worth reading?

b.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The book is quite good but Jane Smiley's chapter is by far and away the best. I linked to the memoried post in which I excerpted a bit more from her chapter. It should be above in my original post. Googling Smiley yesterday, I discovered that she also has recently published a book called Thirteen Ways to read a novel or somesuch. I like her books a lot, swhe is one of those real craftswomen of plotting and the novel. If you don't like them, then maybe it's not for you but I trust her advice on these matters.