My manuscript is no good. It’s not finished. It needs work. This is the feeling that has been dogging me lately. As I come closer to sending out the first query letter, closer to possibly sending the manuscript itself out, the voices of self-doubt have grown steadily louder.
I was paging absently through the book last night, counting the number of words in a few random lines, so I could get an average words-per-line and multiply it by lines-per-page and then by the number of pages to get a decent estimate of the word count. Once that was finished I started reading the page that was up. It happened to be right before one of the scenes that was bugging me. There was one sequence of events that felt forced, as I recalled, and it has been on my mind. As I read through the scene, I discovered something unexpected.
It was fixed. There was a break, the start of a new section, a shift in the point of view, and an introduction of one of the main characters that not only felt natural, but also revealed an important character trait of hers.
Damn. I totally didn’t remember fixing that. Once I read it last night, it all came back to me. So I can laugh now at how wound up I’ve been getting. The manuscript is done. I’ve revised it enough that I just need to trust myself to have fixed anything that needed fixing. I’ll probably go through it once more to weed out any remaining typos, but I’m going to relax; I hear it will help me live longer.
Congrats on the finished manuscript. I hope to have a first draft done soon. But now I’m thinking of trashing my current novel and starting over. It gets very confusing when writing.
Ok Mike, I know very little about you but you seem to be wound pretty tight for a liberal!! What is up with that??? Tell me do you feel the urge to take a red pen to my blog posts when you read them?? I have a sneaking feeling you do…….however I am soooooo glad you are finished. Everytime I read this blog I imagine you pacing around your apartment somewhere like Tommy Boy wanting to jerk the wheel of the car right into a pole. And your hair is standing straight on end!! No more self doubt…..the voices in your head are bothering me and they need to SHUT IT!! Congrats!! for real! keep me posted…..:)N
Don, I’ve had that same urge (to trash my novel) more than once. In fact, I’ve felt that way about pretty much everything I’ve written at some point. I ignore it, though, because even the really bad stuff contains things to learn from.
There was one point during the first draft when the story was heading in the wrong direction. I excised about 70 pages, back to the point where the protagonist took a wrong turn. I pointed him in the right direction and the story developed on a new path, which worked out nicely.
Nikki, I don’t pace too much, but I have thought about buying a podium to put my laptop on, so I can write standing up. Is that weird? Not sure it would work out, but I’m probably going to give it a try. I keep telling the voices in my head to SHUT IT! Sometimes they listen, sometimes they tell me to get lost. Salvador Dali once said, “The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad.” There’s a fine line, I guess.
Thanks for the encouragement! I’ll let you know when to look for me on the Today Show, promoting my book. (Might be a while.)