#finish the first draft on a new manuscript i've been mulling over

[frankiehagg]

writing journal: i'm restarting my manuscript from scratch, again

i just finished the fifth week of my second go at grad school. i am studying to become a translator! it is so great and uses my skills as a researcher, writer, and editor SO well, in ways i hadn't predicted. it has also, until this week, DECIMATED my capacity for non-school reading and writing. it's been so nice to pick up a non-assigned book, of fiction, about people who aren't real. missed this.

as my skills develop away from the crisis mode of learning a new skill, lean into my existing editorial skills, and leave me more free time, i find myself having time to fall into The Bad Mood, which happens when i'm not being sufficiently creative. so tonight is my rip roaring friday night of... starting the seventh draft of my six-years-in-the-making book manuscript, from scratch, again.

some FAQ about my intense journey with this manuscript:

Q: WHAT KEEPS GOING WRONG WITH THIS BOOK?

A: fundamentally, nothing. the story was too character-heavy in its first incarnation and dealt with themes that have been progressively less interesting to me. more accurate to say that my skills develop at a pace faster than the manuscript does. i don't mean this as a flex; i've averaged ~7k a month on this manuscript for years & other projects have naturally developed my skills along the way

Q: SEVERAL OF YOUR LAST DRAFTS HAVE ONLY BEEN 5-10k BEFORE YOU SCRAPPED THEM. WHY? ARE YOU *SURE* NOTHING'S WRONG WITH THIS BOOK?

A: i uh... ok, everything's wrong with this book. the themes are wrong. the beloved characters i have retained along the way no longer fit the story—at least one of them, the main character as i imagined her, needs to join the 350k pile of killed darlings, and the others need to undergo serious relevance editing. the logic of the setting is quite thin. my style is also "broke" on the scale of broke to bespoke; my skills are better now, so now every time i write this piece the voice is unbearably weak and uncompelling. fixing voice has been the main impetus for these endless restarts, and i haven't found one that both sounds good and works with the setting.

most egregiously: as the themes and setting are developed, the plot breaks and breaks and breaks.

i've been aware of these issues for a while and i hoped writing through them would fix my problems. not so. now that i've had a nice monthlong break from writing (at least, anything that wasn't translated from the original french), i opened my document and... didn't like what i saw. i opened my wiki and didn't like what i saw. i opened my file of short story ideas and—saw a theme. a theme that works very well with the setting i've been trying to develop, overhauls everything, and gives me a fresh lens from which to spawn new characters or refresh old ones with new purposes.

the first thing i am doing is scrapping everything. all meta material—gone. new scrivener file. new wiki file (i use obsidian for wikis, which i wrote at more length about here). i'll keep the old stuff for reference, but this is a new world for a new story. i am entering only with a vague understanding that this is a science fantasy story, both hero's journey and tragedy, and... isn't NOT about the john searle–jacques derrida debate.

it'll be good, i swear!

the second thing i am doing, for the first time in my life, is attempting to write a COMPLETE, COMPREHENSIVE outline—i am normally a cheerful planner-pantser combo—before i write a single word of prose. i am hoping this will help me identify areas of weakness before i invest a ton of words only to meet a dead end. since my time is at more of a premium than it used to be, i'll be able to mull things over longer-term and hopefully come to the file on weekends with developed ideas.

the third (and final?) thing i'm doing is to identify elements of style that i particularly vibe with in *reading* and make a point to run 20-minute style drills when i can carve out a spare moment, and keep them in a separate file for reference when it comes time to actually put down prose. i'm hoping this will help me hit the ground running with a style that motivates me to keep writing it, and prevent more style-related dead ends as well.

there are a lot of different ways to outline. beat sheets have helped me in the past, including save the cat and romancing the beat. increasingly i am moving away from beat sheets as structural crutches, but having a visual guide for the outline stage is still useful to me.

there's the kind of intensely complicated outlining tool like MOTT, but every time even i, a detail-loving methodical research type, open this spreadsheet, get scared, and close out again. instead i'm going to try a combination of the snowflake model and the ring structure as i try to feel my way toward a setting-relevant plot: my snowflake is going to have five act-sized points to start, and from there i will develop smaller and smaller details until i have a narrative outline that is also symmetrical for that "the hero comes home but they can never come home again because their home is NOTHING LIKE THEY THOUGHT IT WAS" kind of journey i'm going for.

i do NOT know if this is a good idea, it might NOT work, i might wind up with a rambling scrivener outline that is basically just a summary of the plot the way i have tried and burned out of in the past. but it'll be fun! let's try new things! failure is liberating in that failing again doesn't feel that bad! that's true, right? that's definitely true.

if you don't hear from me again i've gotten lost in the outline mines, but know i died as i lived: upset that my manuscript still isn't working.

(first posted in a slightly simplified format on mastodon).