NanoRealityCheck

I'm working on the second novel in my trilogy. Editing it. I wrote it way back in 2002, as a NanoNovel. I haven't touched it since then, until now. Now is the time to whip it into shape, to finish it, and work on the third and final part of the trilogy, which was written as a NanoNovel in 2003, I believe.

So I'm editing. And liking it. And wondering if I'm seeing this right. Because the thing about writing a novel draft in a month is that much of it is written on an adrenaline rush, a high of literary proportions. And there's little time to second guess, to self-censor, to get in the way of your creative excesses.

Which means it can be excessive. I've just edited a sex scene that's the longest sex scene I've ever written. It's gratuitous. It's purposeful. It's hot (well, to me). It's necessary to progress the plot.

But if it hadn't been Nano, if I hadn't been counting words and just letting it flow wherever it wanted to go, cause in the back of my mind I could always revise it later, then it wouldn't have been this.

It would have been that.

And I'm trying to figure out if this or that is where it's at. Because honestly, I have no idea. I love stream of consciousness writing (evidence: this blog). I love a little purple prose. I love emotional buttons being pushed. And I feel that's what's going on here, in this sex scene, that under other circumstances wouldn't have gone on for so, so long or revealed so much.

But it feels right.

And I can't see otherwise right now.

Nano creates something apart from what I usually do, when I'm writing over my shoulder. Maybe, after I complete this draft, this edit, I'll reread it and be mortified. But not now. Not now.