I'm only getting started

I wrote a little on my novel tonight, about 500 words. I'm encouraged by this, because with the stresses related to assisting my family, I wasn't putting any production expectations on myself until after this weekend. In fact, it feels like writing it released some stress.

I know 500 words seems poor. I have written up to 3,000 words a day. In fact, I could write 750 words in less than an hour. They would be coherent, too. But they'd suck. When I was writing that fast, I had to totally rewrite or throw out what I've written.



When I first write something, there's hesitancy, a self-doubt. What I put down on paper usually needs a lot of rewriting, slashing and TLC to get it in shape. (This applies mostly to the pre-first draft, and what I call the "beta" draft, but it can come up on any draft requiring a scene be written).

What started out as Ginger Snaps fan fiction has evolved more into my own work. The principal character isn't in that movie or any of the sprequels (GS, in fact, has one prequel and one sequel. The character is a 17-year old psychotic girl. She has hallucinations and delusions but she's also psychic and could see the supernatural, especially ghosts. The psych facility she's in was once a TB sanatorium and is heavily haunted. Ghosts are sad, not scary, to her.

Then there's also the detective/werewolf hunter, and his protege/replacement. Those two are also my characters. The story isn't as simple as a werewolf tale, though the werewolves are the scariest things in it.

I'm 522 pages into this now. It looks like it'll be no shorter than the previous draft, and in fact, a little longer. I've been cutting a lot, but I've been replacing it. What I'll have when I get done is a "competent" first draft. Then I start cutting. 

The shame is that I still can't tell how much longer in weeks this is going to take. Every estimate I've made on it has been comically wrong, with the exception of one: I have been able to meet a deadline of 2,000 words a week to read to my writers' group. That's about 300 words a day. That's low, but it's the first deadline I've ever been able to meet with any regularity.

I suppose I could get a lot more done if I neglected diet, hygiene, health, sanitation, bills and any interaction with the outside world. However, that's all self-defeating, and self-destructive.

My writers' group tells me this is good enough to attempt publication, and they urge me to drop out or alter the fan fiction elements. This would mean, however, that I couldn't put this draft up on fanfiction.net, and only some select fans of the original Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond would ever see it. 

If anything, though, I hope I'm learning to streamline the process so I an write another novel in a fraction of the time. I love what I'm doing. I hope I have at least twenty-five years left to do it.