Breaking a Golden Rule

For a few years now I've had a rule that I've tried to stick to: finish one first draft before I start another. I know from a couple of projects I've abandoned (though, technically, they're just there waiting to be finished) that I can't get involved again easily. Once I step away from the characters mid-first draft it proves tricky to ingratiate myself with them again. But I'm preparing to break that rule today. I do have reasons though - if that makes it any better.

I'm away from home at the moment with nothing but my laptop and my brain. My plan was to work on the second draft of 'Liz' (see here) but I've done a fair few thousand then stopped. It's a mixture of things. First off, as I mentioned on Friday, I'm using this novel to get to grips with Scrivener. That's not a terrible thing in itself but I am finding that working without the notebook in which I wrote detailed notes on the alterations that needed to occur within every scene is very difficult. I don't think I'm prepared to work on it now only to have to iron out the creases once more when I get home.

Okay, so I've struck that second draft off the list of things to do. However, I'm still in the middle of a first draft of another story ('Izzy') so why don't I just continue with that? It's sitting comfortably at just over 32,000 words but, again, there are aspects to the story I've got written down at home and I don't want to wing it at this point because I'd added logic to the plot progression. That doesn't always happen in my first drafts so I want to make the most of it. (Incidentally, the progression to this one was not written in a nice notebook; it was scrawled on a scrap piece of paper while in Costa so I hope it doesn't go a'wandering.) Aside from the notes issue, I'm not sure I can access that protagonist in my brain at the moment. She's, erm, potent and requires my full attention. But my attention has been drawn elsewhere.

A while ago now I got another idea that I made a brief note about and aimed to return to in about August or whenever I finished 'Izzy'. But having no real ability to continue with 'Liz' or 'Izzy' at the moment I turned my mind back to it yesterday. The initial situation has taken hold. I have no idea what happens after the second chapter but that's how I like it. Me and Kathy and ready to go...

Organisational Matters

My office temping jobs instilled in me a mania for keeping things organised - at least as far as work is concerned. I like my bookshelves to be neat, my filing cabinet to be segregated and to know where I'm up to with any specific task. I don't know why it's taken me so long to create the two things I've completed in the last week considering the spreadsheet madness that has taken over my life since I started my PhD but these are two things I'm now using in my writing life:

Scene Analysis Spreadsheet
I'm fairly sure that I saw this idea on someone else's blog (and would credit if I could remember, honestly). I've gone through the latest draft of the first novel I completed. This is the one I completed for NaNoWriMo 2009 and which has undergone major changes since then. Nevertheless, I looked at it and knew there was still something missing. So I created a spreadsheet with the following categories to break each scene down into the sum of its parts and see exactly where I was:

Chapter
Scene Number
Scene Description 
Scene Type
Characters 
Location
Day/Time
Protagonist's Goal
Protagonist's Motivation
Protagonist's Complication
Outcome/How Does Scene Affect Growth?


I'm using the exceptional book Make a Scene by Jordan E. Rosenfield to help me with the breakdowns and see whether each individual scene works. I've got thirty one chapters and eighty-five scenes to work with. The novel needs a lot of work but collapsing it into individual units to be assessed may make it seem less intimidating. I am, however, happy with the overall story and structure. That only took two years!

The Book of Ideas
Again, I know I borrowed this from someone else but I can't recall who. I've taken a huge notebook, about three hundred pages, and have listed all the current projects and ideas I have with notes detailing where I'm at with each of them. Each project has a whole page to itself, meaning I've got plenty of space to fill up with details later. It looks quite empty at the moment but I'm hoping that'll change. There are three things on each page - 'Subject', 'Format' and 'To Date'. What's intriguing - for me, anyway - is the breakdown I've currently got in different formats:

Prose (novel) - 11
Prose (short story) - 28
Script (play) - 2
Script (television drama) - 4
Script (radio drama) - 2
Script (film) - 1
Script (musical) - 1
Script (unsure) - 1
Unsure - 5


As you can tell, I have too many ideas! Documenting them like this will help me keep track of them and encourage me to work on the ideas I've already got instead of dreaming up new ones all the time. Well, that's the theory...

Crunching The Fourth Draft Figures

Now I've come down from the elation of actually closing the document housing my fourth draft and sending it off for a lucky someone to read, I decided to open my spreadsheet of daily totals and see how the whole endeavour panned out. Please tell me I'm not the only writer obsessed with statistics. It's a habit I picked up in my last job and, actually, all my PhD stuff is organised onto spreadsheets that do several wonderful but useless things. I like the information there, so I can berate or congratulate myself as necessary, So, let's take a look.

I started the fourth draft on 16th January and completed it on 6th April. My calculation there is that it took me 81 days.

I wrote nothing for this particular story on 31 days of the 81. That means I only really worked for 50 days on it. That makes my average word count over the days I actually wrote 1361 words.

On 27 days I wrote less than 1000 words.

On 15 days I wrote between 1000 and 2000 words.

On 3 days I wrote between 2000 and 3000 words.

On 5 days I wrote more than 3000 words.

My highest daily word count was my last (6821) and my lowest was 324 on 26th January.

Well, I have to say, I like those figures. They're not too shabby. It proves that I could complete a draft in two months if I worked everyday. It also proves that the slowly-but-surely method yields results. I didn't manage to meet my minimum target of 1000 words on more than half of my working days and yet I still completed the thing. My five 'super-spurt' days were pivotal in the success but it would only have taken me a few more weeks had I stuck to lesser amounts.

I shall now stop dwelling over the fourth draft. I'll have enough to contend with when I deal with the next one...