leechcraft

I'm back to the SF novel. I have been working on it for quite a long time off and on (mostly off this year) and have discovered that it is being written according to the following pattern.

(1) Write a bunch of stuff, coming at the story from all directions at once, nonsequentially, building up a rough sketch of the Something
(2) Get freaked out by the mess I've made
(3) Work on some sort of outline, a term I use very loosely
(4) Make big cuts of everything written so far in service to outline
(5) Repeat

The rate of attrition of words here is I think at least 75%. With most of my other novels I'm sure at least half the words written would end up in the first draft, and certainly with the earlier books I probably used as much as 80% of what I wrote at first crack. Now I'm down to maybe 25% tops.

I've been aware of this for a while, but I didn't know what to do given that this one refuses to submit to outline. I decided that the simplest solution is to increase my output. The minimum I can afford to write is probably 2000 words a day. I would love to write 4000 a day and keep 1000, but I'm not sure I have that in me right now. So I'm aiming for 2000 with the realisation that 1500 of them will be trashed.

It's always interesting to have a new problem. This particular story is wildish. It wants to go everywhere, all the time. No self control. It's been that way from the beginning, and whenever I try to talk sense to it, the thing dries up and goes stale and pretentious. I think for now I need to just give it its head and let it be as absurd as it wants, knowing that the really egregious nonsense will eventually get cut when I am in a sober and reflective mood. I do this in faith that somehow, by letting everything out, by draining off some of the excess, I will eventually end up with some small handful of clarity.

Working this way gives a deeply unpleasant feeling in terms of performance, a sense of repetitive failure and dismay. And yet it seems I must either do it or be stuck. So: faith.