The Road Not Taken

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

I took the one less travelled by, 

And that has made all the difference

-Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

          I don't know if I could honestly say this is my favourite poem by Robert Frost, though he is hands down my favourite poet. Fire & Ice, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Take Something Like a Star, even the old fan favourite, Nothing Gold Can Stay... these are epic poems; beautiful, simple and powerful. Still, the one above is the one that I'm resonating with today.

          As a writer, you want the passion and power seen in Fire & Ice. However for editing... you want something calming and The Road Not Taken has that in spades, as well as the feeling of discovery and that unnameable (or at least, that I know of) feeling that we may have missed out on something great due to our choices, while still being happy with our choices.

          Editing is that feeling intensified. 

          Its my favourite part of the process actually, taking something that sucks and making it great. Though I am left sometimes wondering at the roads I didn't take, the paths I didn't follow. Would they still be there if I went back? The words would be, but I don't know if the same burst would come to me, wavering my conviction. 

          In the end, as Linkin Park says, it doesn't really matter.  You need to choose a path and follow it to the end. Going back to the beginning just to see could-have-beens may be interesting, but you can't live there (though I feel a short story burgeoning through me with that line).

          In my editing this week, I made a decision to delete a character. Inarguably important to the creation of my main character, he no longer had a place in my novel. I replaced him and felt almost fragmented. I will never, except in memory, in past writings, see that character again. 

          And I, I took the road less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.

          Lets go make a difference.

Read Through Editing: 30/110 or 28% completed

Far-Seeing from 56,000 words

          From the lofty place of 56,379 words, I can see a bit further than I could when I was only at 50,000 words. The first thing I notice, is that I have a lot more writing to go... okay, not a lot, but more than I thought. At my best guess now, I have 1-2 more chapters (1.5 - 2k each) to get out the end conflict of my novel. I'll also have an expected 2 chapters and one tenuous scene of epilogue material (another 1 - 2k each) which means that my novel will probably be end up being around 62,000 - 63,000 words long.
          The second thing I realize is that despite the advice to write every day when you get home, it can be really difficult, even when you're excited as hell to write. A few weeks ago I hurt my foot and despite taking some heavy duty anti-inflamatory's and some pain killers, my foot is still really hurting me when I get home from work. It means that either I'm being too tough on my foot or that something more serious is up with it (more on that when I see my doctor in two weeks, so until then, I'll take the prescription and do what I can).
          The third thing I've discovered is that sometimes life likes to kick you in the gut just to see you spew all over the ground. I'd rather not talk too much about it here, but I've got family that got some bad news from the doctor... not life-threatening, but it could be life-changing and it leaves me feeling uneasy. At least, I can say that life took me out to dinner before it kicked me in the gut though.
          This last thing I'm going to talk about has nothing to do with my writing life or life kicking me in the gut. Near the end of February, I signed up for WowBox, a Japanese Candy subscription box. It finally arrived yesterday. I got some pretty awesome stuff in it, but the main thing I've taken away so far is that these snacks thus far have been insanely sugary.  Good/Bad, I'm still deciding, but sugary, is something I can say with conviction.
          That's it for me today though... hopefully, I next time I write in this blog it will be to tell you I'm done my novel! We'll see though. I'm getting close, but it all depends on how much time I have to work over the next little while. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.

I Hit An Important Point In My Novel

Yesterday, I got out of the first third of my novel. Okay, I technically may have passed it the day before but I'm counting it as yesterday because my characters have now left town. For the first time in my novel I am describing bog and swamp, talking about bandits and weaponry, rather than courtesy, sisters and ex-lovers. It really feels like my novel moved into a whole new world.

So I guess that's some advice to take with you novelling... if you feel stuck, send your characters someplace they've never been before. It can add a lot of new life to a piece that you feel a bit stuck on.