I've begun typing in my handwritten novel and for the first few days found myself feeling really gloomy. The typing itself is more boring than you can possibly imagine and I presumed that this was because, well, typing long documents IS just boring. But then I began to wonder if it wasn't the novel itself.
It's awful. I had finished it thinking how full of passion it was, how spectacular that this entire work had just poured from me onto the page, how excited I had been when writing it, experiencing floods of emotion, living through its highs and lows. Heh. I might have felt passion and high emotion but it sure doesn't come out on the page. It's dull, uneventful, and worse: full of every single beginner-writer's mistakes you spend your life trying to avoid.
It tells, it doesn't show. There are so few descriptions that you can't get a sense of the city, which is the whole idea. You don't get a sense of the people. And you don't care. It's emotionally manipulative rather than evocative. I had been so sure I was doing "stream of consciousness" writing but in fact, it's nothing like that at all. It's just drivel.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a first draft. It was written fast. It was written without editing (as it's handwritten) with the intent of editing it later. But still. I had vaguely hoped that there was something special here. Now it seems I'm going to spend a year hacking away at a shit novel, trying to make it shine.
I can't find a title for it either, though it hardly seems to matter now. It will have "Jacaranda" in it somewhere. Jumping Jacarandas. Hahaha (sigh)(gloom).
It's awful. I had finished it thinking how full of passion it was, how spectacular that this entire work had just poured from me onto the page, how excited I had been when writing it, experiencing floods of emotion, living through its highs and lows. Heh. I might have felt passion and high emotion but it sure doesn't come out on the page. It's dull, uneventful, and worse: full of every single beginner-writer's mistakes you spend your life trying to avoid.
It tells, it doesn't show. There are so few descriptions that you can't get a sense of the city, which is the whole idea. You don't get a sense of the people. And you don't care. It's emotionally manipulative rather than evocative. I had been so sure I was doing "stream of consciousness" writing but in fact, it's nothing like that at all. It's just drivel.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a first draft. It was written fast. It was written without editing (as it's handwritten) with the intent of editing it later. But still. I had vaguely hoped that there was something special here. Now it seems I'm going to spend a year hacking away at a shit novel, trying to make it shine.
I can't find a title for it either, though it hardly seems to matter now. It will have "Jacaranda" in it somewhere. Jumping Jacarandas. Hahaha (sigh)(gloom).
All ready to go
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