Usually when I finish a draft (unless it's the final one), my head is just teeming with all the decisions I have made along the way and all the things I want to change—expand, eliminate, revise, edit, etc.—and the last thing I would want to do is put the writing aside for months and give myself a chance to forget all of that—and much, much worse, kill all the momentum I have at that point.
Well, as far as I see it, it is the case that you do not feel that you have finished the creative process, so, as you say, it is not recommended that you stop it at that stage until you are sure that your muse has nothing more to say about it. This is a sensation, also as you say, completely personal and variable according to the moment.
Side note 1: I still think @
Steve Harrison is an idol! Monster, extraterrestial!
Side note 2: hey, @
ckatt: what are your intentions with that novel you speak of? If you want I can take a read, because I don't like that there are almost finished projects and they stay in limbo. Let me know.
To riff on two things I saw on the front page
"Surely good prose must be essential when there's so much competition"
Well the obvious problem there is that good prose is very subjective isn't it? I am very adamant in my view that simple, quick-reading prose that doesn't have any fussy constructions that trip you up is, in the right place, good prose. I'm pretty sure I'm not in the majority there but that doesn't stop me believing it. All it takes is one agent who believes the same as me and one commissioning editor who thinks "it'll sell" and ta-dah! You have a book getting published that not everyone will think has good prose. Repeat the same thing with purple prose, with angular experimental prose, and you get the picture.
Although frankly I could have just said look at 50 Shades and Dan Brown and Dragonlance and Chris Ryan and *insert which ever author doesn't do it for you here*. We all know stuff that we think is atrocious gets published. I'm just offering logic as to how. And no, it doesn't torpedo books. I saw one guy release a book that I thought was a Cthulian abomination, it got absolutely trashed on Goodreads so I'm not alone... and the author has already sold his next book.
"In an ideal world you'd have it all in your book"
Well yes, yes you would, but none of us are in an ideal world and we've got to make choices about what we focus the most craft on. If you've got twenty minutes to cook a meal, you're probably going to take some shortcuts. For authors whose writing is often a third or fourth priority - or full time authors who need to keep producing books - there's limited revision time. Nothing wrong with making prose the god, but it will hurt other areas unless you're very good, or willing to spend forever.
Finally, I'd like to offer a quote from a Gemmell interview
"2. Have you ever written a book, not been happy with it, but had it accepted and published anyway?
Every time. Authors always feel they could do better given more time, more money, more praise, more cuddles. The truth is that mostly we can’t."
He also remarked that while he could have rewritten his first book, Legend, to be technically better, he could have never improved its spirit, and its spirit was all.
Others have already championed this sort of mentality but in this thread, but I'll champion it again. Do your damn best, don't think prose doesn't matter at all... but it's not the be all and end all for everyone.
And yet when
The Road swept the Pulitzer, and
The Yiddish Policemen's Union did the same with the Nebula, the Hugo and the Locus, both by authors who actually came from the mainstream, the general opinion of the fandom is that the treatment of the central idea in both stories was, at least, "basic", and the idea wasn't a flash of creativity either.
But they were WELL written.
My overall conclusion is that we are missing two things:
1. Ambition. But not in an arrogant sense, but of thinking, and rethinking, and rethinking, WHAT story can have a moderately decent and/or novel breaking point, apart from being reasonably written.
I'll give you just one example: at least those of us who work in advertising know that the core concept behind a successful campaign ALWAYS requires 80% thinking and only the remaining 20% is execution (or writing).
Or in musical terms: you don't have to cover Metallica. You have to aim to write better songs than Metallica. That should be our parameter.
2. Patience. And this must be the 20th time I've said it, but it goes for newcomers. If you are twenty years old now, be patient. When you are thirty years old, remain patient. By the time you're forty, you'll already know that patience is the key. And this is new: but, for God's sake, THINK before you write. Do not waste time, nor do you waste the poor readers. If God gave you the tremendous piece of brain you have, then use it.
I swear to God I'll throw an egg at the next guy who does a story with wizards, elves or dragons.
