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Blogs by Kathy Kubik
Day 18: NaNoWriMo 11/18/2006 8:31:28 AM
On writing crap "First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down."
- Ray Bradbury
I've reached a milestone, 40,000 words written! It's all downhill from here, and if I write 2,000 words every day (not much more than my current wordcount goal) I'll be done by Thanksgiving! But I'm not going to rush it.
As I am nearing the end of the first draft, I'm realizing that some of what I've written is crap. Some is great. Some of it is just a skeleton of what I ultimately want this novel to be. I'm realizing that this is something that will be carved out of this first draft, through second and third drafts. To carve a sculpture, you don't start with the finished product. You start with a block of marble, or wood, and then you start chipping away. Like most things, as a society we want them NOW. We want to be thin NOW, we want to be rich NOW. Well, these things aren't possible. There isn't a magic pill. It's unreasonable for me to expect perfect prose to bloom out of my pen as I write my first novel, my first draft. I am going to stumble, I am going to sputter, I am going to have highs and lows. And ultimately, when I am finished, I am going to have a fat first draft I can work with, to sculpt into that masterpiece that resides in my head.
And if I'm lucky, I'll build wings on the way down.
