While I was struggling to figure out what I was going to write about for today (it’s T day on the Blogging from A to Z Challenge) I was saved by Kern Windwraith when she tagged me for the Lucky Seven meme. Tagged starts with T, so yay!
Unfortunately that means I have to share some uneditted first draft-y badness, which, ya know, isn’t my favourite, but it will get the job done. Actually, I’m kinda lucky because though the section of my WIP that is covered by this meme is slated for straight-up deletion it’s not terribad and it really shows the voice of my protagonist, Tannis.
Go to line 7
Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences or paragraphs and post them as they are written.
Tag 7 authors and let them know.
My first drafts are written by hand with lots of crossed out parts and notes to myself. Page 7 has no cross-y out-y bits, but there is a note to myself. I’m going to leave it in. Because I can. (Notes to myself are surrounded by *** which is a holdout from when I used to draft on the computer, the stars made the notes easy to find come revision time)
Also, my lines are very short because of the size of my notebook, so I’m writing until seven lines in the field I’m typing this blog post into are full.
So, without giving myself time to chicken out or list a bunch of excuses and explanation, here is a bit of the first draft of Twixt, starting on line 7 of page 7:
I can’t take this conversation much longer. It’s all blah, blah, freaking blah. Reminds me of how it used to feel when my two best friends back home, Cindy and Lauren, would start talking about World of Warcraft. They’d be all like “We’re gonna raid Mount Doom with our PVP and DPS” or whatever, and babble on for hours, completely oblivious to the fact my eyes had glazed over at the first sentence.
Thinking of theme made me sad, so I stood behind Kasey and started doing jumping jacks. Each time I jumped I could see over the top of her hair, but Richter was doing an admirable job of ignoring me. The bastard.
Finally, blessedly, Richter and Kasey wrapped up their conversation. ***Cut everything before this point. Let’s try to start this again in a way that reveals stuff slower***
- Beth Cato
- Amber Stults
- KV Taylor
- Clare Revell
- Alison Stone
- Damien Walters Grintalis
- Jonathan Pinnock
I made that list largely by going down my Twitter feed and picking the writers I didn’t think would hate me for chosing them. If you didn’t want to be tagged, I’m sorry, ignore me, if you did want to be tagged and I didn’t pick you, I’m sorry.
~*~
This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by Kern Windwraith and the letter T. If you come by tomorrow I’ll be blogging about something that begins with U, but you’re guess is as good as mine what it will be LOL
I’ve seen this tag game on so many blogs lately. It makes me wonder what I would have to post and if I could do it without editing. Probably not.
LOL that sentiment is the very same one that made me share 7 lines and not 7 paragraphs 😉
I like it. It’s sort of a “writer in action” kind of excerpt, like you’d do if people could watch the process and not get bored. 😉
LOL and suddenly I am imagining a writing-based reality show… I’m not interested in watching it 😉
Thank you for stopping by 🙂
Great voice!
Thank you 🙂
Okay, I could “see” the jumping jacks scene immediately, first from the outside observer position, then as the protag. Boing… boing! 😀
So you write your first drafts by hand? Whew! I don’t know what I’d do without my laptop. Kudos to you!
Yay! I’m glad you could see it based on just the little bit I shared 🙂
I find first drafts the most difficult part of the writing process and the internet is far too full of pretty shiny things for me to actually buckle down and write if I’m on my computer. Also, I type way faster than I write, so doing my first drafts by hand forces me to slow down and think about the words more before they go on the page. It makes for a stronger first draft.
Okay…I played along 🙂
http://alisonstone.wordpress.com/
Now I hope the people I tagged don’t mind. J
Yay for playing along! I hope no one is grumpy at you for tagging them 🙂
Love the jumping jacks bit – I can totally see it!
I could never write my draft completely by hand, but I do a lot of brainstorming that way. The nature of my day job is such that there are times I can just stand around and daydream, and this is when I work out plot and character issues and jot them down. Then I bring the notes home and type it all into my outline. Works beautifully!