by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Things are going really well with these four novels that I’m developing and writing all at the same time. And, yet, there’s a problem — I’m lingering a little too long on the beginning of the first novel.
I keep revising and revising the exact sequence of scenes to a ridiculous extent.
I’m giving myself an astonishingly tight turn around timeframe. I want to finish the first draft of the last novel no later than around my birthday in February. I’ve done a back-of-the-envelope schedule for myself and to fit into it I need to break this bad habit of mulling the beginning of the first book so much.
As such, I’m moving on. Leaving scenes blank beyond their description in the outline. I can come back to the scenes I haven’t finished at some point later in the process. I know what I’m going to write in them, it’s just something doing so causes me to tinker with everything over and over again to the point that I don’t get past the first three chapters.
This is not, in the long run, sustainable.
So, instead of fucking with chapters 1, 2, 3, of the first novel, I’m going to delve into its chapters 4, 5, 6, 7. As it stands, the first act ends around Chapter 10 (the exact number keeps bouncing around between 7,8,9 & 10). But these four novels are so good, so interesting and I have the looming prospect of buying a Nikon 780 in the next few months in front of me that I’m feeling a huge amount of self-generated pressure to put up or shut up.
My writing and storytelling ability is so much better than it was when I started this process. Time to rock.
