Day 7: Backtracking

Today, I want to talk about what happens when you've been writing along quite merrily and you're nearly at the 10,000 word marker and you realize...the beginning is wrong. How on earth did you write a beginning that is just that wrong?

Here's the thing. So much writing advice revolves around the idea of not going back and fixing. Just moving forward. Ignoring what was wrong in the previous chapter, telling yourself you'll figure it out later, when you're done with the whole book. Right now, your job is to keep moving forward.

But what if you can't? What if the thing that you wrote wrong is going to color every other thing that you write? At least, you think it will.

Do you go back then?

I think it depends. In the past, I've kept writing. In the past, I've finished books that I hated, absolutely hated, and consequently threw them away and started something new. In the past, I wrote, but I never really got anywhere.

So, for this book, I'm going to try to fix it. I have sat down and brainstormed in my notebook about how to fix the wrong thing. I've talked to my crit partner. I've looked at the beginnings of my favorite books to see what they do. To see how and where and why they start a book. I made a game plan.

(Speaking of my notebook, that's another new part of my process. I'm going to try to brainstorm every chapter out before I sit down to write it, in the hopes that it will prevent me from getting stuck. Also, the fact that it's hand-written and completely temporary will hopefully let me be more creative than I would otherwise be if I was just writing the story on my computer).

I'm hoping it works.


So...for right now, I'm not going to post how many words I've written, because I don't know yet.

ETA: I started a new Chapter 1, which takes place a little earlier than my current Chapter 1. Not sure how much of the current Chapter 1 will stay, but I'll cross that bridge tomorrow.

Words written: 1,239
Total words written: 8,396
Chapter written: Worked on a new chapter one. Edited a bit out of current chapter 2.