9.21.2006

Untying knots

Time for some whining: I did a draft of a novel, then rewrote it, and now I have to comb through it for problems, and have realized that although it's fun to write a draft, it's painful to try to whip it into better shape. This is one of those times that I have to keep myself from falling into despair because I'm pursuing something that is difficult and solitary. It's one of those times when I think, "I wish I knew someone in the business who is waiting for or wants something that I'm writing," because I have to dig myself out of some problems, and I need some solid and constructive help that is going to have concrete results, because I'm having a hard time working by myself in this orbit out in the wannabe universe.

Right now, I'm looking at the "scenes" that I've written, and see that it was fun to write the drama and conflict, but the problem is that they're not in order, or there are clumps of scenes that are in order, and then the next clump should go elsewhere. So now I have to untie the plot knots that I've created--I've literally gone through part of the draft and have numbered scenes in the order that I think they should go and have written notes to myself where I think a scene should be created and inserted.

In other industries, you're either already working within an organization or know someone who is, so all you have to do is contact them if you need some help. But in the impossible fiction-writing world, the established/successful writers and/or editors and/or agents and whoever else is in the biz don't want to deal with you unless you're already in the system. And even then, they may not even want to talk to you because they have their own impossible dreams to fulfill in the ever-shrinking scene as they compete for readers and consumers. And besides, they have thousands of hopefuls clanging the gates around their moats, so why the heck would they want to deal with any peons?

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