30
Nov
The first draft of my current project is officially finished! Woo-hoo!
Now on to the revision process…
Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy this part almost as much as the initial writing process. In fact, in some ways I enjoy it even more — the story is written, so the threat of writer’s block and the frustration of trying to work out all the facets of the plot have vanished. Now, I get to just have some fun fleshing things out, developing my characters more fully, digging deeper into their motivations, tightening the writing and making it even more fast-paced and action-packed.
I’m getting excited just thinking about it!
Of course, check back with me in about a month and I might have a different attitude…
(Originally posted Oct 28)
30
Nov
I’m procrastinating.
I should be finishing my current manuscript, but for some reason I’m experiencing an annoying case of writer’s block. It’s not nearly as severe as the case I suffered through a couple of weeks ago when I despaired of ever writing another word. Irrational and melodramatic, perhaps, but when you sit staring at a blank screen long enough and no words come to you — not one — you start to fear the worst. (Ironically, in the first scene in which my heroine appears she is suffering from writer’s block. Don’t think I’ll use that scenario again.)
I think part of the problem is that I’m literally pages away from finishing the project. Normally this would be a cause for celebration, but I have already written the ending in my head and am so anxious to get to that point that I’m having difficulty focusing on the scenes that are necessary in order to get there.
Sure, I could skip to the end and just write that part and fill in the rest later, but somehow that feels like cheating. It’s one thing to write scenes out of order when I’m jotting them down in my journal, but when it comes to actually crafting a rough draft, I like to write the scenes in order so that I can chart the progress of the plot and let the story unfold as I go. And, frankly, part of my love for writing involves going through each stage of the Aristotelian plot structure as my readers would — agonizing over the crisis, fearing for the happiness of my romantic couple, experiencing the joy of their eventual happily-ever-after. Besides, there’s just something about the incredible sense of accomplishment and pride I feel when I type the very last word of my manuscript that would be lost if I fell back on a work-around.
Now, if only I could get there…
Another contributing factor to this obstinate blockage is that I’ve been pages away from finishing the first draft for about a month. As I write, my stories have a tendency to take on a life of their own and evolve in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. This has particularly been the case with this manuscript. The fringe benefit is that the story is far richer and more intricate now in the telling than when I originally plotted it out. Unfortunately, it also means that what I thought would be just another chapter or two has morphed into five chapters with at least one more and an epilogue to go.
When I hit a wall last month and felt like my writing career was screeching to a halt before it even began, I forced myself to keep writing — even if just a paragraph each day and eventually wrote myself out of it. Granted, pretty much everything I wrote during that time was complete and utter crap, but after a lot of editing, it turned out okay. So, I imagine I’ll do the same now, chiseling away one word at a time until I break through the blockage. With any luck, the wall will crumble sooner rather than later and the floodgates of creativity will once more open wide, releasing a torrent of ideas that will sweep me swiftly to the resolution I envisioned.
And so, if you’ll excuse me, I need to grab my sledgehammer and get busy breaking down that wall…
(Originally posted Oct 11)
