How Did He Know?
Like I said, I've really liked being a part of Goodreads because I like hearing how readers respond to the stuff I write.
Jake said some very nice things about Lost Everything (thanks!), but he also said this: The whole reading experience was exactly like those last 5 minutes before you fall fast asleep. You aren't quite dreaming, but you aren't quite awake.
This comment really floored me because it is exactly the time of day that I wrote the entire first draft of the book. (How did Jake know?) LE was written by hand, in bed, right before I fell asleep, because at that point in my life I was so busy that it was the only time I could find to write anything. Sometimes I fell asleep mid-sentence. It was weird.
Now, that said, I didn't edit it in the same frame of mind. As you might expect from the way it was produced, the first draft was a total mess, even by my own standards, and it took a lot of caffeine--and a lot of really good feedback from critical readers--to get it to where it is now. It was all probably a lot more work than it needed to be; certainly it would have been more efficient to write while I was fully awake. But at the same time, I think there are parts of it that just wouldn't have turned out the same way if I'd been alert and logical, and some of those parts are my favorite passages in the book (see note 1 below).
I don't think I'll ever write a book like LE again, for all kinds of reasons. And these days, I write in the morning. But I think for LE, the hour when I wrote it suited the material, because above all, I needed to be honest--whatever that means when you're making so many things up--and in the exhausted, half-delirious state that I first got from one end of the book to the other, my guard was down the most.
B
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Note 1: For the record, when I page through my books now--which, I'm serious, is quite rarely--I find them to be pretty uneven, though each one also has passages in it that I don't think I could write as well now if I wanted to. I don't know what that means, exactly, but it's true.
Jake said some very nice things about Lost Everything (thanks!), but he also said this: The whole reading experience was exactly like those last 5 minutes before you fall fast asleep. You aren't quite dreaming, but you aren't quite awake.
This comment really floored me because it is exactly the time of day that I wrote the entire first draft of the book. (How did Jake know?) LE was written by hand, in bed, right before I fell asleep, because at that point in my life I was so busy that it was the only time I could find to write anything. Sometimes I fell asleep mid-sentence. It was weird.
Now, that said, I didn't edit it in the same frame of mind. As you might expect from the way it was produced, the first draft was a total mess, even by my own standards, and it took a lot of caffeine--and a lot of really good feedback from critical readers--to get it to where it is now. It was all probably a lot more work than it needed to be; certainly it would have been more efficient to write while I was fully awake. But at the same time, I think there are parts of it that just wouldn't have turned out the same way if I'd been alert and logical, and some of those parts are my favorite passages in the book (see note 1 below).
I don't think I'll ever write a book like LE again, for all kinds of reasons. And these days, I write in the morning. But I think for LE, the hour when I wrote it suited the material, because above all, I needed to be honest--whatever that means when you're making so many things up--and in the exhausted, half-delirious state that I first got from one end of the book to the other, my guard was down the most.
B
-------
Note 1: For the record, when I page through my books now--which, I'm serious, is quite rarely--I find them to be pretty uneven, though each one also has passages in it that I don't think I could write as well now if I wanted to. I don't know what that means, exactly, but it's true.
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Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that most writers feel about their stuff the way I feel about mine, though I've never asked any of the other writers I know. It'd probably make for a kind of interesting survey. (Assuming it wasn't all exactly the same answer, of course.) And thanks for the kind words about Lost Everything.