Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Burn Baby ...

The outline came together within minutes. The ideas flowed quickly, disgorged onto the page. And then the painful editing began.

This is what happens when I write. It all comes out fast, even furious, words impatient to be released, burying ideas and subtlety in the rush to be on the page. Then the words have to be separated, sent to their corners, and new words brought in to explain and fill in the details.

This time the whole process is a slow burn. The online class is supposed to take two years, from initial idea to completed novel. After six months of character development and world building it was finally, finally! time to outline.

And so it flowed. And I estimated the number of pages per section I could realistically expect given my tendency to burn fast at the keyboard. Total word count: 29,000. That would make a nice little novelette, but not a novel. I need to learn some kind of zen writing technique.

Because I hate editing.

Slow burn, baby. Slow burn.