It’s tempting, isn’t it? I learned to stop a while back for exactly the reasons you’re talking about. It’s bad enough to get useless feedback at the beginning, but when your readers can’t get that early crap out of their heads it makes it worse.

Now no one sees a draft until I’m done with the goddamn thing. Unless I’m collaborating with someone there’s really no point in sharing it early.

It’s tempting, isn’t it? I learned to stop a while back for exactly the reasons you’re talking about. It’s bad enough to get useless feedback at the beginning, but when your readers can’t get that early crap out of their heads it makes it worse.

Now no one sees a draft until I’m done with the goddamn thing. Unless I’m collaborating with someone there’s really no point in sharing it early.

Yeah, man. This is my plan going forward. Too many pitfalls otherwise. And again, sucks for the reader, too.

– c.

I’m trying to think if I’ve ever done this. I don’t think I have (at least not open to wide public, which is what you’re getting at). Rory likes to read what I’ve done for the day, though rarely offers commentary and because I think he likes being able to see the process. But that’s beside the point.

I am seeing a lot of excerpts floating around as a side effect of NaNo. Heck, your profile on the site actually has a space for you to do this. I … uhhh … can’t say I’ve read any good ones. Glaring grammar and structure mistakes aside, there’s no context and there usually isn’t a hook.

Beyond that, I’m often not swayed by the excerpts put up for polished up-coming novels. Again, it’s the lack of context when that excerpt is taken from anything but the first few pages. I really wish more publishers would stop with random passages and offer up the first chapter or two (or 10 if you’re HarperTeen (but hey, it got me to buy those books)) or take a page from Amazon and let you take a peek inside.

I used to do the same thing. It’s like a kid when they get their first magic kit. They want to show everyone the new trick they are working on before it is perfected.

“Look what I can do,” the child says as he stumbles through a trick where his Mom can obviously see him palming a quarter.

“That’s nice Billy,” Mom pats him on the head and he feels a nice glow.

Eventually, if the child gets serious about it, he spends a lot of time behind closed doors, and not necessarily for the reasons she suspects. He only shows off his tricks once he has practiced them in front of a mirror and even he can’t see how he did the trick. It becomes a matter of professional pride to him.

It may be hypocritical of me to agree with you, considering the project on my site is to release a first draft short story every week, but no one is reading the site but my friends, family, and a few classmates. It’s really more of a shaming tool to get me to commit to writing in spite of my five-class schedule, four children, and the many and varied other distractions.

So, on the whole I agree with you. If you are still using your training wheels, share all you want. Once you start taking your craft seriously, it’s time to stop showing off every piece of writing that you see as the finest piece of writerly gold ever. You may end up doing some serious operating to trim the fat that you didn’t notice in that excerpt the first time through. Then how are you going to feel, grasshopper?

holy crap. Better get my zero draft off there then.

No, kidding. I do post on a blog that’s pw protected. Just helps me see the missing puzzle pieces. That’s all. No contamination danger to readers.

I have a pseudonym who’s doing this, but it’s the nature of the project. I spend more time revising those “first draft” postings than I do anything else, I think.

I’ve actually taken it a step further, and stopped *talking* about what I’m working on — in my case, that’s because I’ve found that the excitement I get from sharing my thoughts on the subject actually leeches the energy away from my desire to actually finish writing the damn thing.

It’s almost like there’s only so much potential “story energy”, and telling it drains it quicker than writing it.

@Gareth: I have that precise issue as well. I get all jazzed up about the WiP and find myself talking the ears off of friends and family about the fresh idea/chapter/character.

This has its upside as well, though. I sometimes find myself in the throes of a small creative seizure while I’m talking about the project, and this can help fill in some of the gaps. Overall, it’s a bad idea for me as well, since the energy does seem to dissipate somewhat with each re-telling.

Damn, it’s so hard to keep my mouth shut about it though…..

That made me feel dirty…which is kinda cool.

Shannon, who will ejaculate no words before their time.

Shannon –

If you take away one thing from this blog and one thing only, let it be that after reading it, you might need a shower. Possibly one of those delousing showers.

– c.

But what if you’re not offering dry cake ingredients, but lovely, unbaked cookie dough? Sure, it’ll taste good once it’s baked, but people don’t like the beaters or mixing spoons for nothing. Maybe the rule should be: “Don’t offer people dry cake ingredients, because no one likes that, but *do* offer them yummy cookie dough, if you’ve got it.”

QED.

To abuse this metaphor until it cries and weeps –

Ahh! But cookie dough can give your eater/reader salmonella.

Hah! Eat that!

– c.

This actually mirrors what I’m thinking lately, if a little more coherently fleshed out. See, I’ve decided to try this NaNoWriMo thing, and there’s this place for an excerpt in with the novel info. My first reaction was “hey, I’ll put up that section where we meet this awesome character, I like that bit!” But then I looked it over, and guess what? It was already stale. There were bits that needed revising to account for what had happened since, which just tempted me to start revising that section before the first draft was finished which is something I’ve been trying no to do… so yeah. Short version here is: no excerpt from me.

@Gareth: That’s actually why I didn’t post anything for my Tour de Holmes until I was about a third of the way done — because I knew that I would chew up cycles in responding to the posts, which would slow my pace down. If I’m always ahead, I’m less likely to poke at what’s out there right now, so I can keep my energy up but still indulge in my secret love of providing teasers through comments like “Oh, I’ll address this in more detail in later posts.”

@Chuck: I wonder what value there would be in rebranding excerpts. Something like “here’s something that I’ll likely cut or heavily rewrite, so you can see what you won’t get in the project.” It’s a way to chuck out bits you don’t like, but still provide some value and excitement about the project overall, like the cut scenes on DVDs.

@Eddy –

It’s an interesting idea. Not necessarily a bad one, but my thought would be, if you know it’s wonky to begin with (gonna rewrite, gonna cut, gonna edit), why send it out? It’s like saying, “Hey, this shirt makes me look like an asshole, but I’m going to go out in public and wear it for ten minutes.”

It’s interesting from the perspective of people looking to see a writer’s process, and I’m all for seeing how the sausage if being made — but I don’t know that it’s any benefit for the writer or the work.

– c.

I’m conflicted. Of course, I’ve done WAY more that post excerpts. I wrote a whote draft of a novel online, posting a chapter a day once I got rolling until the draft was done. The up side? Because I’d gone public with my plan, it forced me to keep moving, so I wrote the sucker in record time. The down side? Yeah, it needs a mess of work, and, should it ever get published, it will be VERY different from what people read on line.

Do I think posting the draft as I went along harmed the final product? Nah. I always figured I’d be going back through the thing and all the attendent ugliness associated with the editing process was going to happen — lipsuctioning chunks of verbal fat, lopping off vestigal plot limbs, grafting on new, firmer plot tits, etc. Did it harm the readers? I dunno. It’s not like they paid for it. And it’s not like I look back at that first draft and am embarassed by it. I liked it for a first draft.

So, like most things, I’m of two minds. Or at least two minds.

Danb

@Dan:

The difference in what you did is that you posted the entire thing. Not a context-free snippet. We’re not talking tail and snout: it’s them and everything in between. The whole damn animal.

If it worked for you, then I’d say thumbs-up.

I’m generally pulling back from “creation in public,” as it doesn’t personally give me the proper energy. It actually robs it, as GMS noted earlier. I’m also afraid of the danger of putting a whole work out there unfinished. The fear from my perspective is either a) they’re going to be just unimpressed enough to not want to buy it later on or b) they’re going to be impressed so much they’ll find no reason to buy it later on.

That leads back into a discussion of the values and dangers of “FREE,” though, which is a whole other piglet.

– c.

One of the guys in my small writing group wants to share a chapter of his book as he goes along. I know I won’t be able to get my head around things as much as if he just one day gives us the entire manuscript.

I know I’ll read things and think, “I wonder if he explains this question I have later?” and a pile of other things. And, because he’s planning to hand things over as he goes along, he’s obsessing about every word as he goes along, so it’s taking him a long time to write.

I’ve always been quiet about what I’m working on, even with people close to me. Part of it’s through no choice: my wife refuses to read partial work or listen to me talk about what I’m writing because she wants to go in not knowing what to expect. And I love hearing feedback from people who didn’t know what was coming their way.

Not being able to talk about what I’m doing or share excerpts as I go along–for me–works. It’s natural to want good feedback. It’s tough to wait when working on a novel, but it’s also a great motivator in getting me off my ass and writing.

If your sample text gives the reader salmonella, doesn’t that mean that your words have gone viral? What writer doesn’t want that?

#ametaphoricalbridgetoofar

[...] and ‘how the writing went this morning/this afternoon/this evening/yesterday’, fewer posted excerpts, less time “getting in the [...]

On the topic of recycling cut material and giving it as a teaser… How much of your material is cut for word count or space considerations rather then because it fails to make the grade as something good? If you’re talking about material that is the worst of the best, that’s still pretty damned good. And it makes people go “Wow, if this is what FAILED to make the cut, what kinds of awesome did?” The trick is to make it clear that it’s overflow and that it’s a kind of a gift. Think of it more like the bits that go into the directors cut version of a film rather then the bonus blooper reel.

For an example, take a look at what’s been going on with the Ink Monkey stuff at the White Wolf forum boards… some of it is writers writing for free because they love it, some of it is what would otherwise be cut material from the books… and it certainly seems to drum up interest in the books, at least with the fanboys over that way.

[...] also mentioned this article by Chuck Wendig about why story excerpts in mid-first-draft are a bad idea. I think there’s some value to [...]

I am way guilty of generally posting a blog entry without doing more than minimum scan on it. Sometimes it’s because I’m tired, other times I feel like I’m playing ‘beat the clock’ (which is silly in terms of librarian blogs because no one is racing), but I have to say being lazy is pretty much at the top there.

At least I’ll edit it if I see a mistake later. That’s a good thing, right? =P