Day 10 (August 7) - Pulled teeth with Chapter 5 and got a lot of apparently useless lines, because they didn't help me jump the plot gap. After half an hour, gave up for the day. Went downstiars and cleaned up doggy poo from the carpet--Ginger is sick these days; probably caught a cold from when we washed her.
Had an extremely unproductive day, in terms of writing. I took a two-hour nap in the evening and woke up at 9 pm feeling sluggish. It was dark downstairs. I let Ginger in, closed the garage and locked the door, then went back upstairs. Only a few minutes later, there is the sound of the garage door opening and then knocking and shouting from outside. Apparently I locked my dad out; he had gone off to visit a friend and pick pears and peaches from a nearby orchard. Anyways, realizing my error, I hurried downstairs and unlocked the door. The whole incident reminded me of Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" with the banging and shouting and locking people out (or in, in the case of the story).
Anyways, I finally return to Chapter 5 at 11pm. Surprisingly, I had figured out how to bridge the gap, at least partway, in the morning. And it didn't take me long after sitting down to figure out how to move Chapter 5 forward. It's still a lot of talking heads, but now it has some momentum and set up for the mid-story peak which should be in Chapter 6. So now Chapter 5 is in some semblance of an order. Not really what I would call drafted, but it is storyboarded, at least enough for my purposes, and I can move on.
On another topic, I was thinking today how people always ask, how far are you from being done? How done are you with this chapter? There's really three ways to answer that. One is, you can go by process and say, "I've drafted the whole chapter and am on my first revision." That's a good answer to me, because I know exactly what that means--there'll probably be at least another huge revision after that, and countless dissection of word choices and phrases, countless re-readings with a critical eye for plot, for character, and a critical ear for sound and language flow. There may be only one more huge revision looming ahead, or maybe two or three, but then a million little revisions and edits that all add up. Because the person asking the question knows even less than the writer where the finish line is, that answer means nothing to the questioner.
The second way to answer, and it's somewhat related to the first way, is to go by percentage. Say, I have my draft and have finished a round of heavy revisions. By this point, if I did my work well and make no gigantic changes to the plot down the line, I might say that, optimistically, 70% of what I have right there is going to make it to the final draft. (Do note that this is all speculation, as I have not yet produced anything near a final draft yet.) Of course I may need to add scenes and delete things and nitpick, but the manuscript itself is 70% done. This sounds optimistic, but really, it doesn't tell you all that much either. If the first 70% came after a lot of headbanging, teeth pulling, and blood-letting, then the last 30% will come in excruciating cuts. Tiny papercuts, maybe some larger ones for a short transition scene. But by in large, it will be a painful, slow process whereby you have to make an old beaten cowhide boot shine, somehow. This way of answering the question sounds more optimistic than it really is, but it is more informative than the first way in that you know the endpoint is 100%, or maybe 120%.
The last way to answer is to go by time: "I've worked on this since high school, on and off. And at the rate I'm going, I'll never finish. This effusion of creative desperation and raw want will never see the light of a bookstore. Or maybe it will, in another decade. Five years if I really try. Two if I suddenly turn into a genius writer and everything goes smoothly. ...Okay, fine. I know what you're asking. The first complete draft--a real draft and not skimpy chunks of scene and plot and character and dialogue, with a full set of first-time revisions (because an unrevised first draft is absolutely worthless and terrible by nature)--will be done by the end of this year. If I kill myself. Which I plan to do, because yes, it's time to stop dreaming and start chasing the dream." That probably answers the question in terms the questioner understands.
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