Novel? What novel?
My sister-in-law posted a link to an essay by Anne Lamott about first drafts.
The essay is about the need to write — just write, without expecting it to be good — and then come back and try to turn the writing into something better in the editing process. Sadly, the pace of the writing I have to do for my day job doesn’t leave much time for this kind of process. But I try to dip my toes in it from time to time, most notably in November, when (as regular readers will recall) I participate in National Novel Writing Month.
Those same regular readers will recall that my 2007 novel was fiction inspired by my short-term foreign mission experiences. It was, as you would expect given the demands of writing 50,000 words in 30 days, awful. NaNoWriMo novels are almost supposed to be awful. But I liked parts of it and wondered if it was something that I could rewrite.
I fumbled with it for a while but wasn’t quite sure how to begin what needed to be done. Then, earlier this year, my old screenwriting professor e-mailed me about another matter and, when she found out about the novel, she offered to look it over. I sent it to her — and set aside working on it, because I figured I’d wait until I heard back from her. I didn’t hear anything for months. I assumed it was because it was so awful and irredeemable that she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Actually, she just never got around to reading it, or at least she told me that this summer.
Anyway, I’ve thought about the novel several times lately, and reading the Anne Lamott essay was the latest catalyst. I still don’t know if it’s worth rewriting or if I’m capable of doing so, but maybe I’ll give it a closer look in the next few weeks.
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