Jarsto's Writing Blog

February 04, 2006

The Power Of Doing Any Thing With Quickness...

"The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possesor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance."

- Mr. Darcy, in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This statement rather reflects what I feel about my writing today. I'm not all that happy about the quality. The scene I just finished is awkward and probably won't survive editing. But I did write 500 words again, and I wrote them much faster than yesterday. I wonder if this gem of a statement was Jane Austen inserting her own musings about a similar day of writing into the manuscript.

Though there is some time left before midnight I'm going to leave Lightning here. I've managed to get rid of the awkward scene, so I'll leave thinking up one that works for tomorrow. Instead I'll make a few notes regarding Flame Dancer. It's fresh enough still that I remember what I felt went wrong when I was actually writing. Though I've never made notes like this before I'm sure they'll prove useful when I return to it with red-ink in hand and start editing.

3 Comments:

  • It's so annoying when that happens, isn't it? You've been writing an entire scene, and afterwards you realise it's crap ... or it doesn't fit where you put it (but in that case at least the scene is salvageable).

    All you can do is delete and try again.

    By Blogger Blaine D. Arden, at 14:51  

  • As a rule I don't delete during the first draft. The scene has been tied up now, I'll take it out and find a new way to communicate the information in the second draft. I have to do it that way. If I don't write in an extremely linear way I never reach the end of the book.

    By Blogger Jarsto, at 16:25  

  • last time I encountered a scene that didn't work, I put it in my 'deleted scenes' chapter, and inserted a scene in its stead called 'INSERT' with a small synopsis of what should be in it.

    If something comes to me during my writing, I'll write it, otherwise I'll probably wait until the first draft is finished.

    I have other scenes which have no content and only a small idea of what should be in it as well.
    It's what I use to remind me that It's sort of an alternative to-do list

    By Blogger Blaine D. Arden, at 19:11  

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