Writing

Work in progress. Slow progress.

Caroline GardamComments(2)

Writing a novel is surely making me a better reviewer. And a kinder one.

This process is hard. Without the time luxury to write in large chunks, I fit in hours or two when I can. Which has produced not quite 20,000 words in just under a year. Already I am sick of the thing: the plot, the places. Some of the characters. I can see from here the dead wood that will have to go later, the tangled vines I am writing just so they will get hauled down again.

Oh well.

A little like this
Writing

Little milestone

Caroline Gardam

Thirty. Thousand. Words. And all’s well.
COVID-19 inspired Everyday Film travel Writing

After “Before”

Caroline Gardam

Twenty five years late, I watched the “Before” trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight), on consecutive nights during lockdown. Now I yearn for their “After”-story. Roughly the same age as its leads, Céline and Jesse, when Before Sunrise was released (1995), I was not at all interested in it. A wave of hype carried […]
Writing

Hi ho, silver!

Caroline Gardam

Just finished a chapter that was pretty slow going, because it feels very cheesy. Young. Maybe I should write for young adults. Hmmm. Anyway, clicked CTRL S. Checked word count. 25,000.On the nose. What are the odds?

2 thoughts on “Work in progress. Slow progress.”

  1. If it’s any consolation, the 20,000 word mark of draft one has regularly been the ugliest part of the entire process for me. For at least my first four novels (of 12 to date) it was the point where I thought the whole thing was laboured, false, turgid and doomed. So then I took an afternoon off and the next day it looked less dreadful (it couldn’t have looked more dreadful) and I found my way back in, did some fixing and some new writing and, in the end, no one’s ever said those novels fell in an unfixable hole at the 20,000 word mark.

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