Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Falling in again...

Even though my non-fiction project boasts the magnificent word count (thus far) of a mere 340 words, it's done the job.  By taking my mind off the story completely, in the last couple of days I've been able to go back to it afresh - reinvigorated and full of insight.

How I go about it from here is a matter of some slight concern.  Do I reread the whole thing, mark it up and then trawl through my notes in a thorough, scholarly fashion?  That doesn't sound very like me at all.  Do I throw the whole first draft in the bin and launch into writing the whole thing again from memory, the point of the first draft being only to help me understand the story more deeply?  I know there are writers that do this, but it seems to me that by doing so I'd be in danger of forgetting those rare passages of prose in the first draft that stand tall. 

For now, I'm settling on rewriting each chapter one at a time.  I haven't marked it up because I know the major changes I want to make.  Marks on paper seem to set things in stone, and I'm curious to find where else this story goes in the rewriting.  It's a curious mixture of refining and further exploration.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Hi, thanks for reading - comments welcome!