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elfsI am in the middle of my first official novel written using the Shitty First Draft technique as advocated by Anne Lamotte. After 35 days I am at 39,500 words, so I am ahead of my requisite 1,000 words a day. To be frightfully honest, I managed to acheive much of that by writing 20,000 words in the first four days of the month and then coasting for two weeks with a vague sense of burnout before picking up the metaphorical pen once more. In the past week I have managed to do approximately 1,000 words a day or more, which makes me feel much better.
However, I have now hit upon a conundrum.
The Heroine, having been given handles on the two major intertwining plots (known to my twisted mind as the "Ford Pinto Memo" and the "Duran Duran" threads) has hitched a in a monster truck-train, on the flimsiest of evidences, out to a warehouse on the surface of Mars somewhere between Wingrad city and Seren Corporation's Fissile Materials Mine #2, and one suspiciously close to where the anti-posthuman Bureau of Natural Science and Technology first had to drop nuke on a rogue group of AI scientists trying to bootstrap a hard-liftoff-ready AI.
As I was writing this (and enjoyed writing the scene of two truck-trains of eight 450 metric-ton cars, each piled with three wide by two high by two long standard shipping cargo containers, playing chicken on a narrow canyon bridge during a 200KPH Martian duststorm. "Wave hi to Boris as he goes by!") I realized that her reasons for going out there would be much more solid if she there had been a scene earlier where she had spoken with her uncle, a retired Bureau agent proudly watching his orphaned niece take her first steps out as a rookie, where he encourages her to follow her hunches. He has an ulterior motive related to the nuke crater described above; what neither of them know is just how much crap she's about to fall into. (Nevermind that when the Duran Duran thread starts to close in, she will Come To The Attention of Very Important People)
So, I'm wondering if I should write that scene.
Cons: It's technically against the rules. You're supposed to run as fast as you can to the end of the story, and then do the revision. This is a revision.
Pros: It'll generate word count. It's not really revision; I'm just adding to the story. Also, these are pretty damn good ideas that deserve not to get lost.
So, Anne Lamotte methodists, the question is: When you have an idea like this, do you go back and put it in?
However, I have now hit upon a conundrum.
The Heroine, having been given handles on the two major intertwining plots (known to my twisted mind as the "Ford Pinto Memo" and the "Duran Duran" threads) has hitched a in a monster truck-train, on the flimsiest of evidences, out to a warehouse on the surface of Mars somewhere between Wingrad city and Seren Corporation's Fissile Materials Mine #2, and one suspiciously close to where the anti-posthuman Bureau of Natural Science and Technology first had to drop nuke on a rogue group of AI scientists trying to bootstrap a hard-liftoff-ready AI.
As I was writing this (and enjoyed writing the scene of two truck-trains of eight 450 metric-ton cars, each piled with three wide by two high by two long standard shipping cargo containers, playing chicken on a narrow canyon bridge during a 200KPH Martian duststorm. "Wave hi to Boris as he goes by!") I realized that her reasons for going out there would be much more solid if she there had been a scene earlier where she had spoken with her uncle, a retired Bureau agent proudly watching his orphaned niece take her first steps out as a rookie, where he encourages her to follow her hunches. He has an ulterior motive related to the nuke crater described above; what neither of them know is just how much crap she's about to fall into. (Nevermind that when the Duran Duran thread starts to close in, she will Come To The Attention of Very Important People)
So, I'm wondering if I should write that scene.
Cons: It's technically against the rules. You're supposed to run as fast as you can to the end of the story, and then do the revision. This is a revision.
Pros: It'll generate word count. It's not really revision; I'm just adding to the story. Also, these are pretty damn good ideas that deserve not to get lost.
So, Anne Lamotte methodists, the question is: When you have an idea like this, do you go back and put it in?
