h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It can work... sometimes it's nice to know where you're going though. Future Prefect, as an example, started with the setting and the problem. I only planned out the ending about three weeks ago though.

A Minstrel's tale started with the songs, now I'm just having to write an entire world and a new religion so he can meet the people to write the songs about. If you see what I mean. Having a bit of a DA problem - 3rd arm - great on radio - but on television and the stage ... I've got a similar problem with the religion, basic concept and song - easy - write it into a novel and it needs a bit more than a symbol and a leader.

The most recent thing I've written are a set of operational practises for an AS400.

Ouch.

Oddly enough, having pontificated about all that, I am having trouble 'inserting' a subplot that begins at a certain place and ends at a known place.
The urge to just write on and plow under what follows, rather than trying to harmonize the whole, is very strong.

It is possible to 'over-edit', just as it is possible to not know when to quit.

Writing's a bit like cooking, if you don't taste it as you go along, then you have no idea when to feed it to the dog or serve it to the world... and right now, organizing the spice rack by the second syllable of the labels seems more fun than paying attention to what's on the stove!

+=

Just found this thread...
My book's a kind of SF morality tale. It grew out of a conversation around a toaster in Uni days, twenty-five years ago. It soon reached about twenty thousand words in a handwritten draft, before being consigned to a loft.
Two years ago, a friend recalled it, and a few days later, down it came.
It suddenly gained an ending around Easter 2001, while I was cutting a hedge. The word-processed version soon followed. By April this year, it had a full-length draft at ~110k words, albeit with a too-hectic ending and a couple of major plot inconsistencies revealed by a first full read-through.
...But it seemed fairly good, on the whole.
Since then, I've got frightened of it. It needs a tidy-up, maybe 20 or 30 hours work, that's all, and it'll then be as good as I can make it. I've annotated the needed changes. I have a fair idea of what to do next, as regards looking for a publisher/agent. But I'm scared. You do all that, and then no-one's interested. There's a chicken part of me that doesn't want to face that.
So near now, but it's starting to look like it'll be some time before I find the courage.
P.

Never fear!
You have been writing in the meantime, haven't you?
Let's not ennoble fiction too much.

The 'book' I am working on is in it's second draft after over ten years of six or seven different versions, some of which still exist, others of which were so embarrassing in content and result that I burned them.

It has taken me two years to get from first to second draft.

No one project is truly important.
The deal is to write. Period.
And sometimes you have to archive those youthful beginnings and move on to something else.
If the story is truly demanding to be told, it will find an out, don't worry.

As for fear, the firing squad aspects of rejection in writing are never as great as they would be if you had trained for years for an audition and then found yourself facing the world's greatest expert in your field, sweating bullets and knowing that the next few minutes could make or break your life in your chosen field!

There is nothing wrong with making excuses about why or why not you write, as long as you write the excuses and make them as creative and entertaining as possible. Any excuse to write is better than no excuse at all!

Over to the Royal H2G2 Procratinators then.