Learning From Mistakes

My friend Karen (mywritingloft.blogspot) has begun a series of blogs on 366 lessons she has learned about writing. In one of them she says that every writer should have a process and in another she explains what her process is.  Lucky for her, she learned her process while writing a screenplay and was able to apply it successfully to her novel.
     I have completed two novels, (not counting ones that are finished-but-not-finished because I never revised them enough to consider them as good as they can be - but have not given up on and plan to continue working on again in the future), and I don't think I have a defined process yet.
     I have learned a few lessons about the way not to do things. On my first novel, I wanted to get the bones of the story down first, so I wrote the whole thing, concentrating on just the main plot. This left me with a 35,000 word (barely a novella) manuscript that was a very simple story.  Then I created a few subplots and set about weaving them into the main plot.
     It was a nightmare. Two thirds of the way through, the 3 or 4 strands of the story were a hopeless snarl. I had to virtually rewrite the whole book, going back to the bare bones and starting again.  The main thing I learned from this was that I am not a good enough writer yet to manage a complex story plot, or even more than a main plot and two uncomplicated subplots. I am in fact now working on revision 5 (or 7) of that book and almost have all the tangles out. Maybe a process would have helped me avoid this.
     What I ended up doing with this first book was adding the subplots into the main plot in a staggered manner so I never had more weave together than I could manage. This worked well in my second book also and I was able to add  the subplots or complications to the main plot at intervals and avoid the mess I made of the first book.
     I followed the generally accepted advice of setting aside each book when I was done with the first draft and going on to the next project. When I'm done with final revisions to book one in a couple of weeks, I will begin the second revision to book two. I'm hoping it will not need a half dozen revisions (and two years) to complete. Then maybe I will learn more about developing my own process.

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