Notes In The Margin #4: Over-thinking vs Inactivity

It's a relatively short Notes In The Margin this week, I'm afraid.  I've been doing lots of thinking.

Sometimes that's a good thing.  Other times it's not such a good thing. There appears to be a fine line between thinking things through thoroughly and over-thinking them.  When you're the kind of person who likes to consider every aspect of a situation before you commit to action, then it's hard to actually see where that fine line is.

I'm not sure how one combats that.  I still need to think it through some more...

So, anyway...lots of thinking and not very much doing this week.

After nearly five months of constantly pushing myself to get the fourth draft finished, spending as much time as I could editing and the rest of the time stressing that I should be working on it, I've found this past week an odd mix of blissful relief and sheer panic.

I'm relieved it's done now - although, I do still have the audio beta edition to record - but I'm also experiencing a strange twitchiness at not having anything to do.  It's like a writing low-level cold turkey.  My writing brain has learned over these last five months that inactivity is the enemy and it's wrong not to be working on the novel.  On the other hand my normal brain is saying "thank goodness I don't have to edit/write/create tonight!".

Of-course I haven't stopped all writing activity.  As if it were that easy!  As I mentioned, there's the audio book beta to record and I have a dozen ideas for novels queuing-up for my attention.  My imagination is never truly idle.  There's always something brewing away in that corner of my mind.  Like chunks of rock in new born solar system, some of those fragments will coalesce into larger moon-sized plot points, scenes, or characters.  Slowly, over time, planets of narrative will develop and the orbital plot threads will spin it all together until the whole thing is spinning harmoniously around the sun of the central premise blazing away with glorious radiance.

And other ideas will vanish into a black hole never to be seen again...

Actually, they disappear into one of my real, or digital notebooks, but that can be just as devastating as falling into a black hole!

See.  I started over-thinking things again.  I should stop now and try to switch off.  No, I will switch off now.  "Do, or do not.  There is no try" as one wise little green Jedi fella once said (Yoda, in-case you were wondering).

Before I do stop, I'll just jot down one last idea that I've just had that I think will fit nicely into the next novel...

Muse News #2

It's been a busy old few days in chez Gilbert.  Busy, but not complicated so this will be a relatively short Muse News this week.

It had been my intention to get the fourth draft of my current WIP (Work In Progress), 360, finished and ready for my beta-readers by the end of last week.  However, in rewriting the opening third I have discovered I've negated some plot elements later in the story.  They have to go before I can consider the fourth draft complete and in a fit state to hand over to my beta readers.

Also, after initially hacking 30,000 words from the original 142,000 (yeah, it was a mammoth) during the early days of working on the 4th draft, I appear to have inserted another 7,000 back in as new copy.  That means I'll have to cull another couple of thousand to reduce it to be closer to the 110,000 target as well as clear up the loose plot issues.

Consequently, the original allocation of May for beta-reading is a very doubtful now, so I've revised my plans and June will now be set aside for beta reading (beta reader availability permitting).

The only other real news this week is that, as those who read last Thursday's Notes In The Margin will know, I've been dabbling in recording another audio book version of 360. I've only conducted basic tests with my new microphone to establish the kind of sound quality I'll be getting, which is much better than my previous efforts for the second draft.

I've also been trying out some new voices for the characters as I wasn't entirely happy with the majority that I chose to use last time.  If the resulting audio book is good enough then, once the ebook has been published, I might look at pursuing the audio book idea further, possibly with an eye to commercial release, but that is a very tentative "might"! 

For now I musty concentrate on finishing the fourth draft.  My original target for completing it was the end of March, so I'm throwing every available hour at it at the moment so it isn't delayed any longer!

Hopefully by Muse News #3 I'll have much more to report!