Once upon a--no, that's not it either.

[mrissa]

I don't know why I have this happen every time I write a book: every time I write a beginning, and every time I have to rewrite the beginning to remove the colossal suck from it. Why is this? I could not say. I can begin short stories without the Suckitude That Ate Golden Valley coming and rearing its head every time. But novels, no. Never. Evereverever. Why not? I could not say. I write out of sequence, so you'd think maybe just once. But no.

I fear that this one owes a bit too much in structure/cadence to a certain formative book of my youth, but there aren't any sea serpents, so it has to spill out somewhere.

At any rate, I have been trying for, no kidding, months to get this right--the vertigo slows the process, and I've been working on other things--and now I have one sentence. Just one. But I think it'll get all the rest. I think it'll do.

And now there will be ice cream.

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

Ice cream is good. What flavor?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Vanilla bean with dark chocolate chips and burnt caramel sauce.

[brooksmoses]

Oh, my.

Not only are you too far away, so are your ice cream stores. And your Minneapolis in general, really.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

A bonus if you can spare Golden Valley. They've got a nice Animal Humane Society there and stuff. ;)

[aedifica]

At least it's not Eagan? If the suckitude at Eagan, you'd be gone and unable to fix it. Unless one can fix it from within? It becomes a Jonah kind of thing. Hmm.

[bradipo.livejournal.com]

It seems entirely predictable to me.

A perfect beginning depends on having not just the shape of the story but details of just where it goes and just how it ends. With a short story, sometimes one has a pretty good idea of how it will end and how it gets there--which means that you can see how it has to start. A novel just has so much opportunity to change and grow; even if you have a very clear sense of how it goes when you first write a beginning details will change--and some of those details play a role in determining how the beginning needs to go.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That sounds like something someone who writes sequentially would say, because a perfect fifty-third page also depends on those things, and yet I do not find myself having to consistently rewrite page 53.

[bradipo.livejournal.com]

I still think it's different. Sure, page 53 depends on the whole book, but it depends much more on just a few other bits--the pages before and after, the scenes before and after (both in physically in the book and in the internal chronology of the story). An opening, though, depends on everything in a way that nothing else in the book does except the closing.

Personally, I've almost quit trying to get the opening right until I've gotten the rest of the story written. I've had more luck being pleased with a last scene that I wrote early (and then writing the story that gets me there) than I have with an opening scene written any time before the story is done.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Interesting...may I ask impertinent questions? :) Specifically, do you see the shape of a short story in your head before you write it? Do you know when you start something if it's a short story or a novel? Is your process for a novel the same as a short story, just on a larger scale, or is it a different process?

When I'm writing a short story, I start with the ending, then I write the beginning, and then I muddle around in the middle for a while stringing them together, sometimes successfully. Whereas with an attempt-at-a-novel (there are not any actual novels in my trunk yet) I start with a few scenes that have come to me me, and then I start muddling to figure out what the heck is going on with them and why they matter. So a lot of the resulting draft is discovery, and gets tossed once I figure out what's actually going on, as opposed to a short story, where I already know what's going on, and just have to try to tell it properly.

ed to emphasize: I'm not suggesting that your process is like mine, just that you may experience a similar divide between the short-story process and the novel process. Um, with more publishing on both sides of it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, only more publishing on the short story side of it so far! :)

Anyway. Process is kind of a big thing to lump together. Some of my short story process is the same as my novel process, and some is different. It's true of both that I write what's most vivid to me first and go from there. But in both cases I think I know where I'm going with all of it fairly early. I have lots of fragments in my "starters" file that do not have story attached to them, but the pacing and feel of them are such that I can mostly tell roughly how long they'll be.

Which is why I didn't submit anything to the Federations anthology: I would write 500 words and be able to tell that it was 500 words of a novella or 500 words of a novel, which is not what the anthology was publishing. I didn't want to break the spines of those scenelets, so I would go on to a different idea, which would, when the prose started flowing, make itself clear that it was a long novelette.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

No, only more publishing on the short story side of it so far! :)

I'll happily bet that you sell a novel before I finish one!

I tend to write multiple beginnings for novels because I have trouble knowing where it's supposed to start. So I end up with prologues and backstory and stuff, and then I read a novel with a cool opening and kick myself.

But for me, the structural stuff is what I actually enjoy, and I'm still in the hobbyist phase of things, so I don't mind writing stuff and throwing it away. I would find it really irritating if I didn't think of it as "learning how to write a novel."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

I think that continuing to think of it as "learning how to write a novel" even when I've already written novels is very useful in not getting any more frustrated than I already am here. Mostly I am just baffled at myself for having this consistent a gap.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Is it consistently the same kind of suck? (using your characterization :) For me, the first part that I write is always about finding the tone, so the prose style is often dreadful and needs to die. I write out of sequence so that's usually not the opening, though. My troubles with openings are almost always structural--POV, how much backstory, etc.

If it's generally different kinds of suck for you, and given that you can tell from the get-go what length of work you're writing, maybe you break your work into drafts differently depending on length. That switch in the back of the brain that says "stop and tweak this part" or "keep moving forward" may flip differently depending on how far you have to go.

Edit: for missing word parts. "nee" will henceforth be my shorthand for "needs to die."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's hard to identify how it's the same kind of suck, is the problem. We know it when we see it--it's a Sucky Mris Draft Beginning.

But the beginning is not consistently the first part I write. I write out of sequence, and almost never the beginning first and really really never the end last. So.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I'm now imagining various classic-sucky ways to begin a novel, none of which, I'm sure, are anything to do with you, but my brain is amused by them.

Maybe your internal editor just likes to have something important to do right away when you sit down to the second draft (assuming you edit in sequence).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'd say I edit in sequence or not. I read the whole thing through in sequence more than once in the editing process, and I write on it right away, but whether I go in and rewrite the first chapter first is kind of up for grabs.

Right now, for example, I'm getting rather a lot of work done on later sections of revision by telling myself I don't have to rewrite the first chapter right now as long as I do something else useful on the revision list. Preferably more than one something. Directed procrastination is our friend!

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how encouraging this post is. I have started my first novel and . . . omg. teH suckage.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

In songwriting just to finish a song I often use what I call "place holders". Something to put there until I find the right words that fit the music or complete the thought. Perhaps "once upon a time" is your common "place holder."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Actually, "once upon a time" was just a subject line joke--I've never started a novel that way.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

Ah yes...natural chronic staight man (so to speak) here. Leave it me to walk right into a perfectly good joke and miss it entirely...sigh....

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Well then! There's your problem!