The blank-page rewrite

So, I’ve been working hard today on a quick rewrite of a 5900-word science fiction story. And, just because it’s supposed to be done by tomorrow – I’m starting fresh from a blank page.

In a weird way, devoting myself to writing and science fiction for nearly every waking hour all week has convinced me that such crazy feats are possible. And, also, they’ve convinced me that this story really needs a blank-page rewrite anyway, so I might as well start that way instead of going with the superficial patches that I’ll have to pave over anyway.

I’ve learned an incredible amount about writing so far in the workshop, and the effect on my self-esteem has been indeterminate – like a quantum particle, the act of measuring how I feel about my writing seems to change it these days.

I’ve more or less caught up on my critiques – still need to do some prep-work for Monday, though that can be after tomorrow at 5pm, (the deadline for the rewrite.) I got the new chapters written for the two Roswell crossovers that I wanted to finish in June – Children of the Molecule, which is Roswell/Doctor Who, and Dragon’s Prey, the Roswell/Pern one. The third fandom story that I wanted to update in June – just wasn’t going to happen, I didn’t leave myself enough time for it, though at least I started it before I left Ontario.

And I’ve actually managed to watch some fun science fiction television – I caught two ‘Torchwood’ episodes yesterday, and watched a ‘Sarah Jane Adventure’ and an episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ in the dorm laundry room this morning, staring into my iphone while waiting out the wash and dry cycles.

Kansas stories have been sent in!

So, yesterday afternoon I emailed off three stories to the other student writers for the CSSF workshop in Kansas. It was fun and a little giddy stuff, finishing my rewrite of Harry and Mars, and going over my critique tracking spreadsheets for both Landing and Harry.

The third story, ‘Survey’, on the other hand, I just dug up the most recent draft from last September, checked to make sure that the formatting looked good, and sent it off. It’ll be interesting to see if anybody notices a different between that story and the ones that I’ve put more work into revising recently.

This evening, I booked a town car service to take me from the Kansas City airport to the University in Lawrence. I’m flying in fairly late in the afternoon, none of the shuttle schedules look like a good fit, and I don’t want to have to wait around the airport, so I’ll be making the trip in affluent style. Woot!

‘Harry and Mars’ rewrite update

Big thanks to everybody who left encouraging comments last week when I told you about my plans to do a third draft on ‘Harry and Mars’. It really helps to get such supportive thoughts from total strangers!

So – I started the rewrite from scratch last Saturday, and now I’m up to 5824 words, and I think that the climax has just passed. To my surprise, it’s all new stuff, too, I never got to a point where I thought, “okay, here’s where this bit from the first draft fits in” and copy/pasted it. I definitely had a lot of the same general scene ideas – the engineer finds out about the leaking tank, the captain issues orders to everybody, Harry and the engineer bond and talk about childhood fears, the fire in the reduction lab, Harry trying to get out the airlock – but I had different things I wanted to get out of each passage now.

I’ve also done some interesting character work, I think – I was wanting to establish the crew as being really multinational, and that didn’t come through on the last draft, so I started looking at all the countries who’ve had space programs, no matter how small, and looked around coming up with really distinctive names that obviously signify a nationality or ethnicity – and those names have informed the secondary characters and helped me flesh them out as individuals, in an odd way.

I feel a bit like I’ve been doing ‘discovery writing’ with this draft; I haven’t been trying to come up with a polished product, just get some good stuff in there, especially since I know that the Kansas crew will be able to help me figure out what works and what doesn’t. But I like the story more at this point than I thought I might.

Which is good, because there’s about five days left to finish and polish it before sending it out to my fellow CSSF workshoppers – not to mention any last changes I want to make to the Landing. Tic-toc!