Notes
Thanks for logging in.
MetaxuCafe UpdatesSearching Member Sites
I’ve recently added a search function so that you can limit your Google search to just the blogs that are members of MetaxuCafe. I think that will be a good resource for everyone looking for literary topics online and you’ll find it right on the front page as well as other places on the site. Now if you want to read about, say Orhan Pamuk, but only want to search the litblogs you trust, you can narrow your search right here.
The Three-Quarters Done Complex
by damongarr on June 16, 2007
A funny thing happened when I got about three-quarters of the way through this first draft of my “project.” I had to (sort of) map out where I was going near the end so that I know the critical scenes and could time things, but now that I know more or less what’s going to happen, my interest is beginning to wane. I’m not sure if it was simply that I knew what was coming, thus killing my own curiosity, or if it maybe was a fear of hitting that end. Fear of finishing a draft, which is a strange sense of loss or maybe fear of having to get it all right. I think it was the latter.
I know my basic goals for the project, I know what I want to happen for specific characters, and I know the culminating events, but the pressure to get it all right as I come speeding to the end is a bit much. The speed is part of it as well. I’ve begun to see the destination, and instead of enjoying the journey, I’m hauling ass to get there. And I worry about spoiling the sense of things.
I’ve seen a lot of good novels go bad at this point (Jennifer Egan’s “Look At Me” comes to mind), so I’m especially conscious of what’s happening. I believe in the inevitability of what happens in fiction. Even what’s shocking should feel in some way as if was inevitable. The important thing is to stay true to the story told so far, and to the characters within.
With all of this in mind, I really fell like the pressure’s on (I’m also coming up on one year since I began this draft, which was my de facto deadline). I think I have the ways to see myself through. I have many things yet to discover, I believe I can avoid the deus ex machina, and I know to watch my pace. Maybe, though, there’s someone out there with a little more experience what might want to share their battle stories, and let us all learn from your experience. Any Walter Moselys want to weigh in?
This post has been viewed (on this page) 284 times .
PEN World Voices Festival at MetaxuCafé
Related Discussions
Comments
I thought, too, of going ahead to writethe scenes that I know are coming to maybe allow a little more discovery in between, but part of the fun I’m having as a grow closer to the ending is picturing the climactic scene. It keeps reworking in my head, with various levels of drama, and I’m afraid if I went there, wrote that scene, I would feel like the whole thing’s already done and all I have left is to fill in. But really there is so much more to do.
– damongarr (06/20 at 20-Jun 08:15 -05:00)
Page 1 of 1 pages of comments
I have had the EXACT same problem with the novels that I’ve attempted - except, in my case, I stall out at roughly the one-third point. At least you make it farther than I do!
A solution that was suggested to me recently was that when this happens, I should jump ahead and writethe last chapter - or any other future chapter. The idea is that at least some part of your story is being written, and you’ll be revising it later anyway - so why not skip to the parts you want to write?
I haven’t tried this yet, but I think it just might work, if the project will support it. I made the most progress on a novel by outlining it in depth and writing the chapters piecemeal - one week I worked on ch. 2, the next on ch. 16, etc. That project was ultimately unsuccessful for other reasons, but I was making good, real progress until then.
– jwhitt (06/18 at 18-Jun 17:57 -05:00)