Dickens around

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
―Charles Dickens

Writers are sometimes not the most motivated bunch.  A while back, I formed an online writers’ group with some fellow Northwestern MFA grads, to give feedback and keep ourselves on some kind of deadline.  I love them all dearly, they are fantastic writers and give excellent notes, however getting people to submit for our bi-monthly meetings is like pulling teeth from an elephant with tweezers.  Granted, I have three chapters of my novel which I’m dying to get notes on, and chances are I’ll end up being the same way when I don’t have anything on deck.

Novel writing is hard.  Like really hard.  Especially for a screenwriter.  Do I consider myself a screenwriter?  I suppose I prefer screenwriting, because novel writing is hard.  But I do love my novel.  Right now it’s more of a novella as Part 2 is not entirely finished.  And I would really like to convert my pilot and one of my screenplays into novels eventually but it takes so much damn time!  I’m much faster in Final Draft than I am in Scrivener.  A big reason for this is, though screenplays are highly creative works that only very talented people are truly successful at, they are more like blueprints for the final product that will eventually be consumed by the audience.  Novels, on the other hand, are the final product.  This is a really big difference.

When writing a novel you need to describe everything.  EVERYTHING.  Some things are left to the reader’s imagination, but you need to paint a pretty complete picture.  When writing a screenplay, much of the final detail is left up to someone else.  They don’t want you to tell them what color the heroine’s eyes are (it limits casting), they don’t want you to show them a room in minutia (that’s up to the production designer and set dresser), they don’t want you to starting flinging adverbs into parentheticals before dialogue (actors hate that), and so forth, etc.

Now, lots of people write both novels and screenplays.  William.Goldman.  But they call for different voices and skill set and it’s rough switching back and forth between the two.  But like many a writer before me, I have severe project ADD and have found it impossible (unless motivated by a deadline) to only work on one project at a time.

What am I saying about all this?  I’m trying to work on my novel, and it’s hard.