I am within nanosyllables of completing my fifth novel, and looking through the manuscript today, fluffing and backfilling, I had occasion to return to some notes I made early on.
I stared at that file, thinking, Bgmdvpwha?
The book I envisioned and outlined so thoughtfully bears barely a fleeting resemblance to the book I wrote. But the book I wrote is the book that had to be written. It was the book I had in me. God knows, I would love to be more literary, more commercial, more Oprah-appropriate, more this, more that. But trying to write what I don’t have in me would be both futile and fatal.
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I've often done "webbing" to help me get started, but when I look back, they usually bear almost no resemblance to the finished products. A selling synopsis, written with three proposal chapters, comes closer, but in the end, it's always quite a different book that I turn in.
Yet if I don't bother to plan *something*, I can't seem to get anywhere. So I call my synopsis the "theoretical way this book could end." It's just there to prove I can tell a story's beginning, middle, and end, not necessarily to exactly forecast this particular ending.
Fortunately, the changes in the finished product always seem to be for the better, so I haven't have any editor complaints (yet).
And how about this one?
"Life is short, Break the rules, Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly, Love truly,Laugh uncontrollably, And never regret anything that made you smile." From Doug & Stephen
(remember Doug R from TMB Joni?)