Apparently it is Saturday. Yes, I know that doesn’t come as a shock to most of you, but for me, well, let’s just say panic set in at about 9:42 a.m. for me once I realized it. I have done the unthinkable…I’ve forgotten to post.
I have my excuses, as do we all, and most of them are valid, but my biggie, my bird in the hand really, is that I have this big amorphous blob of a beginning of the new book and I have been wrestling with it, day and night, for the past week.
In fact, when I finish this post, I’ll be going right back to it. It is completely out of control and I’m just hoping that some sense can be made of it. It is no different than most beginnings I’ve made in my life. I tend to have the IDEA, get verrrry excited, get other people all pumped up about it, plow in, and then step back, say hang on a second, maybe we need to get organized.
Somehow having that bit of a beginning already in place makes the organizing part palatable for me. But, oh, I do hate to waste things. When I change a word while I’m writing, I don’t waste letters. No, really. Say I change SLEEPING to SLEPT, I only delete one “e” and the “ing.” I know it would be more efficient to just delete the whole word, or at least everything after SLE but then I feel as if I am needlessly throwing perfectly good letters away.
Yes, such is my insanity.
So, I hold on to as much of my beginnings as I can, but there comes a time when you know you have to change things up, when maybe you have to admit that your first idea actually could be better, that plowing in has its advantages, but that cooler heads must eventually prevail…and that maybe you need to be paying a lot more attention to what day of the week it is.
I’m not laughing at you- instead it is with you. I have a plan for today that involves a cork board, index cards and a strong desire to see if I can make sense of this story I’m 30k into that is spreading and growing in all sorts of odd ways.
Heh! Been there….both the “Wait, I need to re-think this” and the forgetting what day it is.
I think the hardest thing to do is tossing letters, words, scenes, chapters away — because we’ve realized there’s a better way to do it.
(But I’m laughing a little about the letter wastage, too.)
I feel your pain, Kristy! I’m stuck in my WIP not sure where I’m going right now, and came up with another story idea the other day, which has succeded in diverting me from the business of hand. I’m feeling far more excited about the idea–the one that hasn’t gotten stuck in transit yet!–and want to dedicate my time to launching it. So instead, I think I’ll go to the pool and read today…;-)
I can’t tell you how encouraging it is for me to know that the trials I am struggling with as a newbie/aspiring novelist continue on and that published/grown up authors have them too. So grateful you’re all willing to share your process with us.