When I am really into what I’m writing, I get totally spacey. I wander through my house as if it’s invisible, I trip over things and then kick them out of the way instead of moving them, I leave dishes piled in the sink and on my bedside table, I promise the dogs that I’ll take them for a walk and only remember when they wiggle their way into my lap…
My sink is empty, my floors are spotless with nothing to trip over, the dogs are well-walked.
Word count yesterday: probably negative. I edited instead of writing. And then got frustrated with what I was trying to revise and edited some more. And then cut some more. Next I hated myself, hated every word I write, decided I was a terrible writer, and played a lot of Shanghai. Finally I talked myself down from that and spent a long while trying to think myself into my story world, trying to capture bits and pieces of scenes and interactions. At 9, I went to bed. I woke up this morning, still not in story world, but still determined that I’m going to get there.
I like Grace, I like Cam, I believe that they’re going to have a good story together. At the moment, it doesn’t include much in the way of adventure, so I’m going to find them some adventure, but I’m also just going to write the scenes that come to me, as mellow as they are. And–a resolution, a promise, probably mostly a lie–I am going stop thinking about the eventual reader. If I can make this a story that *I* love, then I need to have faith that other people will love it too.
Today’s goal: to get myself into writing mode, story world, whatever I want to call it. To get to that place where the story is as real to me as reality. And if I don’t make it there, to not have that be because I didn’t put all my energy into trying.
Ah that eventual reader. I am discouraged by her/him all the time. I write something and I think, I love that – but will anyone else love or even understand it.
So why do you think you can’t get into this story?
I never expected people to like A Gift of Ghosts. My hero is a slacker, my heroine is anxious and doesn’t want adventure–they’re not exactly the characters bestsellers are made of. And the writing style is not typical–light on description, light on action for that matter! So I do try to remind myself of that when I start getting too anxious. Those of us who think our tastes make us alone in the world are forgetting how big a world the internet has created. Maybe our tastes are rare, but we’re definitely not alone! As for getting into the story, I decided yesterday that this is just typical for me. I say I wrote Ghosts in basically two months, but I’d actually spent nine months writing and rewriting the first few chapters. Time took 18 months, but a solid year of that was–you guessed it–writing and rewriting the first five chapters. When I someday finish Belize, I will get to say that it was whatever it took, plus the more than 18 months I’ve spent on the first few chapters. So the good news is that I think I’ll be able to pick up the pace, once I find my way into the story. And hmm, I should have made this my blog post for the day. It’s long enough!