Q: What's the best way to ruin a book that's perfect?
A: Write it.
This is the problem I always have. First drafts and revisions both. Revisions, in this case.
In my mind the book is perfect. I know exactly what I want to do. I know the sequence of events, the building tension, the emotion that belongs in each scene, all that stuff. A pure and beautiful concept expressed in a balanced, true, compelling way. I can see it in all its glory. But then in the process of writing it down, I have to compromise. Scenes won't come out right. They're too choppy or too long or too flat. Or I realize that I need to switch the order because, dangit, she has to get the job before she can lose it, or I desperately need to cram this backstory in somewhere but it ruins the tension if she spends three pages thinking about something that happened seven years ago, etc etc. Or a character ends up saying or doing something completely unconvincing to move the plot along, just because I'm impatient to make things happen. So it's imperfect on the page. Whereas in my mind? It can be as awesome as I imagine it is.
This is just a phase, of course. It happens with every book. Before I start writing it and then again during revisions. It makes me not want to write, but I have to write. Because that's the only way to get through the messiness. In my mind it's perfect. On the page it's flawed. But then I work through it, and shift things, and reword, and add or subtract, and then hours or days or months later, you know what?
It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good.
So... guess I should get back to that.
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