when the real world gets in the way
Warning: minor whinge ahead. Blame it on the rain (and yes, you will all now have Milli Vanilli stuck in your head for the rest of the day, bwahahaha) –even the damn air is wet in Maine right now. Some summer. So anyway…
I’ve been writing in 500-700 word increments for the past month or so.
I hate that. I am a spoiled creature, and I’m used to turning out 1000+ per hour and feeling pretty good about what I put on the page: in a given week, as long as there’s not too much going on, I can turn out a minimum 4K that has already been through my preliminary I-can’t-help-it, slightly obsessive edit as-I-go process, which generally means I’m more or less happy with it, and will leave it alone until I’ve finished the first draft and decided to rewrite at least 15% of the chapters in the book.
Taking unexpected (or expected) RL craziness, social events, and inevitable moments of laziness that can sometimes turn a three day weekend into a shameful TV-watching marathon, that means I should be able to start and finish a novel in, say, 32 weeks. And that’s giving me plenty of room for messing around.
No so, or at least not this time.
I sit down with my coffee, mess around on teh interwebs for five minutes or so, get my music going, open my WIP… and crawl. It’s like I forgot how to type sometime in May. I know, more or less, where this scene is going; I know more or less how this chapter will end, and how the next one will begin (and end). I know, more or less, how this book is supposed to end. And yet here I sit, painstakingly eking out two paragraphs at a time before I realize I’ve been there for 90 minutes and it’s time to get ready for work. It’s like going to the gym in your sexay workout clothes, mp3 player at the ready and workout plan in hand… and calling it a day after a set of biceps curls. Frustrating doesn’t begin to cover it.
Either I’m burnt out from being swamped in my day job (and I am swamped: June in my profession is always a bit of a bitch) or my experiment with writing a book sans detailed outline is going to be a damned short-lived one.
Suggestions? Advice? Chocolate?
*whimper*
Going through the same kind of thing, my patience used to be so good, now I want to see it finished, published and on the shelf!
Sort of stuck in a short story mode while my WIP slumbers on the edge of the very last step in the editing process. I don’t have writer’s block, or even writing block but transcribing block!
My recommendation would be to go over what you written and see it as a matter of quality over quantity. Sometimes more is not better.
Also it may be time to do a bit of inner outline stuff, as I like to call it. Ask a few questions about and to your current WIP:
Who are my characters, really?
Where am I going?
What’s next?
Why am I writing this?
Why is this character doing this and not that?
Etc….
Hope that helps, in a totally none confusing kind of way, of course!
Amy! Forgive the long absence from your blog, writer gal. The month of May derailed me too. Cranked out a short horror story to go with an artist’s installation piece, but that’s about it. Maybe it’s something in the stars?
Amy,
I’ve come to accept these ups and downs are simply part of being a writer. Some days the writing flows, and other times it’s like pulling teeth. But I’ve learned that if I keep at it, even if some days I write only a few paragraphs of utter crap, that things always turn around for the better.
I remember one chapter I had the hardest friggin time on. Over and over again, it was just crap. Total mumbo jumbo. And then all of a sudden, the light bulb went off, and the chapter that gave me hell, is now one of my faves.
Good luck!
Ah, you guys give me hope. I’ve been here before, and I know it will go away, but the neurotic part of my brain (about 70% of it, that is) keeps wondering if this is The End Of The Whole Mess, you know?
Ralph, thanks for the suggestions: I think I am going to try to sketch out a clearer map for myself, and maybe that will jump-start me. & Tasha, you’re totally right: if I stop, then I won’t even have that meager 500 I’m producing now.
Operation Snap Out Of It has officially begun. Synchronize your watches.
Nancy, good to see you around!
How are you?
Oy, is Mercury retrograde again? Stupid Mercury.
Glad I could help Amy!