It's Crowded in Here
I became aware of something last week for the first time.
The only way I can write a novel is to have it all in my head at once. I work on specific sections, sure, but all 90,000 words are in my head.
At first, I feel like I'm just infinitely rearranging a warehouse of Scrabble tiles. That's why 90% of the first draft is gone now.
At some point, though, those Scrabble tiles start breathing on their own. They add color. They become vibrant. It's the best part, which is where I am now, before I see everything so clearly and realize it can never be as good as I want it to be.
It's still hard, and annoying. I spent three days looking for a crowbar to wedge into a particular chapter (that needed to be completely rewritten, of course). If I just keep showing up every day at roughly the same time, though, failure gives up.
That's not a bad way of describing the process of writing a novel: making failure give up.
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